An In-Depth Look at the Types Of Agile Scrum Meetings

An In-Depth Look at the Types Of Agile Scrum Meetings

What are Agile Scrum meetings?

Scrum is an Agile meeting framework that manages your project and delivers value at short intervals. Recently, it has become the most famous methodology used for managing a software development project. Let's take an in-depth look at the different types of meetings. 

Scrum is Simply a Way to Implement Agile

Agile Scrum meetings are different practices carried out by teams that are implementing Agile. We love Agile at Bydrec, so let's quickly review the three scrum roles. Each of these roles has unique participation in each of the scrum formalities. Through these scrum meetings, each member of the scrum team should be empowered to do their best work. Every session is time-boxed, purposeful, and in service to the overall Scrum team. Realistically, they exist to make delivering software possible.

1) The Product Owner

This role represents the client and the business in general for the product they're working on. They own the backlog and strive to prioritize items to be worked on before every 'sprint.' They make executive product decisions daily. Ultimately, they're interpreting customer needs into actionable work items for the Development team.

2) The Scrum Master

This person is accountable for ensuring the team has all they need to deliver value. They are a coach, counselor, supporter, impediment-remover, facilitator, and arbitrator all rolled into one. They set up discussions and communicate progress and obstacles. I.E., everything a project manager ought to be doing, just through the lens of Scrum.

3) The Development Team

This group of cross-functional team members focuses on delivering working software. It is the singular noun for developers, designers, Q.A., and other technical roles to collaborate on the actual development. Ideally, this group of perhaps 5-9 people is fully dedicated to one Scrum team. The development team should be self-organizing and motivated to deliver value, and with proper facilitation by the Scrum Master and Product Owner, they can be. The crucial scrum meetings are Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-up (daily Scrum), Sprint Review, and Retrospective. Additionally, teams may need backlog refinement sessions where the product manager ensures the quality of user stories and prioritizes the features list.

Types of Agile Scrum Meetings

1) Sprint Planning

Sprint Planning is an Agile ritual held by the Development team, Scrum Master, and Product Owner. It is held at the beginning of a new sprint to set up a prioritized worklist and align the entire team for success throughout the sprint. The Product Owner will discuss a prioritized backlog with the development team, and the whole group collectively comes up with the amount of effort involved. The team then decides how much of the work from the backlog can be completed in this iteration. The sprint session span can be kept within 4-6 hours by following the best Sprint planning practices. Before the meeting, the Product owner explains the user stories and all use cases to everyone. The team can now ask questions about them and get rid of any confusion and get clarifications.

After the meeting, team members can add a new user story or task to find something within a sprint. Team members should communicate to the product owner if newly found work does not seem to be the original part of the plan.

2) Daily Scrum or Stand-up

It is an agile ceremony held for the Development Team facilitated by the Scrum Master. The Product Owner and the stakeholders can participate in this meeting to answer the development team's questions. Each day, this meeting occurs, preferably at a similar location, and is usually held in the morning. The purpose of the Stand-up is to keep everyone on the same page.

Each team member is required to answer three questions:

  1. What did I do yesterday?
  2. What will I do today?
  3. Are there any impediments to continuing working?

The daily stand-up should be an informal meeting and should be no longer than 15 minutes. 

3) Sprint/Iteration Review

The development Team holds an agile meeting with Scrum Master and Product Owner, where the stakeholders may be invited. The Iteration Review aims to show the work that the team has achieved in the last sprint. The format of the gatherings can be casual or formal, reliant on the team's inclinations. Scrum Master needs to plan this meeting well beforehand to ensure the participation of stakeholders who can give necessary feedback on the sprint demo. After giving demos of work progress, the team can expect to collect input from the stakeholders. Sprint Review sessions usually take 1-2 hours.

4) Sprint Retrospective

An Agile Sprint Retrospective is held after the Sprint Review conference and typically takes an hour. Members are Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development Team. The forum aims to find out what worked well and what didn't in the last iteration. The team tries to find out any issue that is influencing the progress. All participants give written feedback. The group takes this session as an opportunity to improve. If there are different issues, the team picks the three most voted issues and discusses them to find their solution together. Attendees: development team, scrum master, product owner. The retrospective happens at the end of an iteration and usually takes 60 minutes.

Retrospectives help the team understand what worked well–and what didn't.

Use retrospectives to find out what's working so the team can continue to focus on those areas. Also, find out what's not working and use the time to find creative solutions and develop an action plan. Continuous improvement sustains and drives development within an agile team, and retrospectives are a vital part of that.

Contact Us

Often, a team's agility is built on solid engineering practices, a tactical and strategic approach to change, and excellent team collaboration. Agile ceremonies facilitate communication across the group. At Bydrec, we pride ourselves on ensuring all our developers are up to speed on the latest Agile methodologies, including Agile Scrum. To learn more, contact us at (866) 219-7733.

 

Topics: agile methodology overview, agile project management

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