SCRUM events and their meanings

Hello there, I bet you already heard of SCRUM / Agile development and you might wonder what kind of benefit it actually brings. Well, It could be great, depending on your need. In our opinion, you may use SCRUM for your Startup organization to improve Transparency and Focus on the Goal and reduce the Stress created by long-lived tickets in your Project management system that seem to show no end. Here are some basics that will help you understand the basic concept behind the Events of Scrum

Daily Meeting

GOAL: Better overview upon daily tasks and keeping the focus on the Goals set by Sprint Planning

LOCATION: A specific room in your building or the URL for the Video Conference. Basically, everyone shall know where to meet the others for the Daily SCRUM.

ROLES: @DEV-Team & SCRUM-Master

RESPONSIBILITIES: Each Person in the DEV Team, One-By-One is presenting the following 3 aspects of their daily work

1. What have I accomplished from the last Daily?
2. What am I going to accomplish today?
3. Does and if so, what blocks me in my work?

NOTE: This meeting is to max 15Min and is not meant to discuss how a task is to be done. Rather give an Insight upon what is going on every day in the Project Planning

Sprint Planning I

GOAL: Create the plan of work that needs to be done within the time defined as Sprint (this could be 1-4 weeks). In this meeting, that usually does not take more than 15-20min. The @Dev-Team defines their commitment-to-deliver. It is basically a Velocity based amount of stories that the Team assures the Project-Owner to deliver by the end of the sprint.

ROLES: @DEV-Team & @Project-Owner, @SCRUM-Master

RESPONSIBILITIES: @Project-Owner is showing the order of importance within the stories in the Backlog, The @DEV-Team “pulls” the number of stories into the upcoming sprint and the SCRUM-Master helps the team to be realistic with their goals. He Reminds the team of the average Velocity, the Upcoming Holidays, and the availability of the people within the Dev-Team.

Sprint Planning II

GOAL: “Tear” Stories apart into smaller tasks that all the members of the @Dev-Team will understand, be able to implement, and track. Each task shall be clear and shall last one working day max. This is where the @Dev-Team works alone and creates a plan for themselves. This is also the part where you can get geeky with your technical descriptions 😉

ROLES: @DEV-Team

RESPONSIBILITIES: @Dev-Team members are self-managed in this meeting. Meet to break down the big plan into smaller daily tasks. Take int consideration to include all the aspects of the Stories and include Backend, Frontend & Testing as well as merging & deployment tasks

Backlog Refinement

GOAL: The point of this Meeting is to make sure that the Stories created by Project-Owner are well defined, clear, understandable, and accredited with a complexity badge called Story-Points (by Developers). This happens within the active sprint, as a preparation for the upcoming Sprint, so that when the Sprint-Planing Event begins, there is no need to adjust the Stories coming within the next sprint, or the Input needed is minimal the least. The outcome of this event must be enough stories prepared for the upcoming Sprint Planing. Depending of the well preparation of the Project Owner and Dev-Team, this meeting can take from 45min to 1,5 hours. Define what works best for your team.

ROLES: @DEV-Team & @Project-Owner, @SCRUM-Master

RESPONSIBILITIES: @Project-Owner brings already prepared Stories into the meeting, that define the next steps and directions towards defined Project Development. The @DEV-Team goes through the Stories and assures that they understand the requirements defined in the Stories. When Requirements are clear and understood, the Dev-Team approaches the Voting Process. Usually, this is done with Planing Poker either with Physical Cards or Digital Poker Tool, such as PlanItPoker

Backlog Planning / Product Planning

GOAL: Project-Owner, Product-Developer & Business-Analyst define the Stories that will be produced within the upcoming multiple Sprints. This meeting defines how and which product features are to be developed. It is important that all the relevant roles who define the future of the product share their opinion. It is advisable to include the User-Experience-Designer in this process so that the conceptual flaws of the Feature Development can be eliminated or reduced the least, as early as possible.

ROLES: @Project-Owner, @Product-Owner, @Business-Analyst, @UX-Designer (optional)

RESPONSIBILITIES: @Product-Developer & Business-Analyst break down the big plan into smaller planes contingent defined for max 2 sprints time. Desired Features are discussed and defined by all stakeholders included. @Product-Owner writes down the desired features into Stories that the @Dev-Team will easily understand and develop with no misunderstandings

Sprint Review

GOAL: This is probably the most valuated meeting within the whole Sprint Process. Developers show off with their expertise and Stakeholders see how their Software is growing feature per feature. This meeting is usually very motivating for the @Dev-Team if they perform well, and often a rather quite shameful experience if the sprint goes bad and the @Dev-Team excessively underperforms their commitment. In the beginning, until the Velocity of the Team is still being calculated.

ROLES: Basically Everyone. Everybody shall rejoice in seeing how software grows

RESPONSIBILITIES: The team chooses their @DEV-Team-Representative who then leads the meeting and presents the features developed by the whole team. @SCRUM-Master gives the intro into the meeting, shares important information upon the upcoming holidays, and helps the team to present their delivered package. He also documents the Feedback that comes from the attendees, who find any flaw in the delivered increment

Sprint Retrospective

GOAL: This meeting is the moment of truth where the @Dev-Team meets to analyze their performance to improve their teamwork. This is a very important meeting for team growth and shall not be skipped even tough many Project-Owners try to skip it. Each member gives their insight into the good and the bad of the previous sprint. The idea is that I admit what were my flaws and what could I do better. The idea is not to fingerprint to one person and find someone to blame, but dig deeper and discuss how I could improve my own failures, ask for help, or provide the same to the colleague who has not performed his best. Important is to keep Respect, Communicate facts, and show Understanding within the Team.

ROLES: @Dev-Team & @SCRUM-Master

RESPONSIBILITIES: @SCRUM-Master prepares one of the modern tools for the introspective and helps the @DEV-Team to look into one-self and bring out the hard facts. Outcome of this meeting shall be clearly defined resolutions of SMART goals that the Team will do to improve their performace in the area, product and team development. @SCRUM-Master is responsible to remind the team of the resolutions defined by the last Retrospective Meeting and see if they improved, and if not, what could be adapted in the resolutions.