Scrum Ceremonies - Running An Effective Sprint

We have already touched on the scrum ceremonies.  However, the way we perform each ceremony goes a long way towards embracing the Scrum process.  Let's take each item individually and examine how we can make the most of them.  These are investments in building a better sprint team.  They come from the Agile principles, and it is important we keep that in mind for each activity.

The Daily Standup

This task is the most popular of scrum ceremonies in my experience.  However, it is often misused.  A well-run standup should be so short it is not worth the time to sit down for the meeting.  A good goal is less than fifteen minutes.  That may seem brief for a meeting.  On the other hand, this is not a meeting as much as an organized method for touching base.  Think of it more as passing by a team member in the hallway rather than a discussion.

The goal is for members to state how they are doing and possibly asking for time to have a meeting or working session.  Obstacles should be noted and whether the sprint is behind or ahead of schedule.  Keep the gathering topics precise and concise.

Sprint Review

Every sprint should have a deliverable of working software.  That is where the sprint review comes into play.  We gather the team together at the end of a sprint to walk through what was accomplished.  This ceremony is often referred to as a demo, and that is a good label.  We set a fixed amount of time (one or two hours), then we have each dev team member present their completed items.

Some of the tasks we complete are non-visual.  That is ok.  We will still present something about them in the review.  A unit test, a log message, or something of that nature is enough to hang a description on and "show off" what was accomplished.

Sprint Retrospective

The retrospective is the improvement focused task of the scrum ceremonies.  The other two fulfill goals and focus on implementation.  This task is where we look at how we did and discuss ways to improve.  The process is simple to leave the maximum time for discussions and ideas.  We do this after a sprint completes and set aside an hour or two with the entire team.

Everyone should list things the team did well and those that need improvement.  It is ok for multiple members to list similar items.  That implies items that have a more considerable overall impact on the team and project.  Once the master list is set, the group discusses possible improvements and what can be done in the next sprint.  That means some items will stay on the improvement backlog for a while.  We will have a lot to improve on when we start.  On the other hand, we should be getting better with each successive sprint.

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Challenge of The Week: How can you incorporate sprint ceremonies in your current project?