• Agile & Scrum Basics

Your 4 essential Scrum meetings

Scrum has four meetings in the process. These Scrum meetings have a set rhythm. Think of the same times of the day or week. The set rhythm ensures that everyone knows exactly where they stand. It naturally takes less energy when it has become a habit. How long Scrum meetings last and when they take place varies by sprint length.

You divide a project or assignment done using the Scrum framework into time periods. We call these “sprints. Each sprint consists of four Scrum meetings, including:

• Sprint Planning
• Daily Scrum
• Sprint Review
• Sprint Retrospective

Sprint Planning

At the start of each sprint, the Scrum team plans the work for this sprint. This is done in a sprint planning: detailed and short-term, resulting in a sprint backlog showing the criteria and effort required.

The product backlog shows what all the wants and requirements for the product are. The Product Owner indicates what the sprint goal is. He or she pays attention to what has the highest priority and customer value. The Development Team decides how much work to tackle. This work is moved from the product backlog to the sprint backlog.

For each task on the sprint backlog, the Development Team clearly identifies what needs to happen to achieve the result. What requirements must it meet? This is unambiguous, creates clear expectations and prevents ambiguities. Also, during Sprint Planning, the Development Team indicates how much effort is required for the work.

Daily Scrum

During a short Daily Scrum (also called Daily Standup) meeting of up to 15 minutes, progress is discussed. Are there any bottlenecks? How will we reach the sprint goal? These are important questions addressed during a Daily Scrum. The Development Team meets at the Scrum Board. For each person, they indicate the state of affairs. Often the following questions come up:

• In the meantime, what have you accomplished for the team?
• What else are you going to accomplish for the team?
• Are there certain issues that could make achieving the goal difficult?

So it is purely a time to draw a plan together for the next 24 hours. You will not be judged, but can count on support from the other team members. After all, you always get the job done as a team.

The Daily Scrum, or Daily Standup, meeting is not the place for elongated discussions, but rather for decisiveness and proactivity. Get real as a Development Team.

Sprint Review

The Sprint Review is there so that team members can present what the results of the past sprint are. This allows you to gather feedback from customers/stakeholders and incorporate it into the progress of the Scrum process.

Often the customer does not know exactly what they want until they have seen part of the product. The input you gather during a Sprint Review can be of tremendous value. The Product Owner can also nicely test whether the customer’s wishes are reflected in the product. He or she also uses the feedback to adjust and update priorities on the product backlog. You can use this again for the next sprint.

The Scrum Master facilitates this meeting and ensures that the Product Owner, as well as the other members of the team, become truly wiser from a Sprint Review.

Sprint Retrospective

The Sprint Retrospective represents the evaluation of the process. With this, the Scrum team concludes a sprint. A Sprint Retrospective is there to learn from the previous sprints and thus always perform better again. How can you perform even better as a team? Team members speak honestly about how the process went … What could be better? What went well?

It is very important to convert the results of a Sprint Retrospective into clear and concrete actions. You can then pick these up immediately during the next sprint. Set priorities, choose the most important action and put it on the Scrum board.