Tips for making your 5 scrum events a success

Scrum events

The Sprint can be seen as "the container" in which the events take place. Daily scrum says it all: daily. A demo? Every week? Every sprint? There are fixed moments. Who is in the lead? No one and everyone. But then there are other stakeholders, like the end users of course, the management and everyone who thinks something of the project. But who is in charge in the end? And how do you know that Scrum delivers? For those who have not yet played out Scrum.org or are looking for a more in-depth approach, we take you through these events.

1. Product backlog refinement

The refinement is not an event, but it is very useful to consider it as such! The Product Owner agrees with the development team what needs to be done, in order of priority. The development team translates the intended result into clear chunks. Tip: for everything you work on, you need trust. Trust in each other's expertise, best intentions, but also trust in the fact that the Scrum team will ask for help if necessary. In practice, people often go through all the stories quickly, discussing the refinement or what must be delivered. See the refinement as a 'good start is half the work', because then the structure also continues in the other scrum events. Together you stand for the best result! Doing and living Scrum is still something else than saying as an organisation that you work agile. Because it will only work if you do it that way.

Tip from Alex: trust each other and discuss what you are up against!

2. Sprint planning

The better the refinement, the shorter the Sprint planning will be. Life is all about priorities! The Product Owner knows best what the stakeholders need and is therefore the Value Optimizer of the Scrum Team. The Scrum Master and the development team know how much work can be done in the next sprint. In this way, together they achieve the "Sprint Goal": Business value! Sounds simple, but with a difficult ingredient: trust! The Product Owner determines the priority, not the CEO or the department manager. This is really the starting point to really start a digital transformation. Is trust lacking? Then look at where it rubs shoulders: training, coaching and educating the Product Owner is important, but so is an organisation that facilitates the best performance! Telling high performing teams what to do from the top down really makes no sense. They make themselves.

Tip from Alex, or as Steve Jobs said: ''It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do! Want to know more about high performance teams? Check Teamnow.nl.

3. Daily scrum

The most important tip: communicate. About how you will achieve the Sprint Goal together. Above all, the Daily Scrum must not become too much of a 'status update'. Did you do something yesterday that you are proud of? Then feel free to share it! If you just made progress, you can leave it out, you'll see it in the scrum board. We get much more value from real help questions or to hear how someone else has tackled a particular problem before or would do so. The Daily Scrum has a 15-minute timebox, so stay within it. Can't do this? Then try the Daily scrum plank challenge with your team. I don't think it needs any imagination, talking through it and getting to the point is guaranteed.

Tip from Alex: open your 'feelers' more often. Pay attention to each other. How does someone feel? Is everything going according to plan? Can you help each other? More tips? Read it in Sander's blog.

4. Review

After the refinement, Sprint planning and Daily scrums, the time has come. The scrum team inspects, shows together with the stakeholders what was produced last sprint and especially what business value it has. The latter is something we do not always see in practice and is just so valuable. Presenting, thinking along, sharing results, feedback. We all want it, but we don't always do it. The review is the perfect opportunity for this! For example, have you read the blog Sprint review: Being a good stakeholder already?

The review is still too often about the 'what and how' and not about the 'why'. Isn't that the most important question? Nice technical solution, API connections and new Azure features, but our consultants also speak the language of the business. Because they explain it in a comprehensible way and show how it works for the end user and what problems it solves for the stakeholders, you create mutual understanding and more stakeholders make time for the demo. Giving a good review is an art in itself. Soon we will share more about how to do this in a sticky way!

Tip from Alex: ask yourself whether you are answering the needs of stakeholders. Are you concise enough and do you show what value you add with technology? What are the reactions of stakeholders like? Do they understand it? Are they happy? Do you have feedback for each other? Go for an open feedback culture. That's the reason you wanted to work agile right?

5. Retrospective

The retro. As a team you look back on the last sprint: how did it go? How did the cooperation go? Were there any obstacles and how were they resolved? You will see that these 'problems' are often not about IT. We make improvements visible. We call this continuous improvement. That should be music to your ears in combination with Continuous Integration Continuous Development.

Limit the retro to 1 topic. Don't make it too big, so you can really go in depth if necessary. Where the review is often seen as a party and very valuable (because we deliver after all), the retro is not always seen as such. But it is precisely to complete the feedback loop to each other that the retro is so important. What are you doing it for? Who did you do it with? How did you do it? What went well? What can be improved? It is a group process and you influence each other in how well you can improve as a team. So don't abolish the scrum process with the last event! Just

Tip from Alex: work agile in the technology but also in the process. Definitely build that bridge between business and IT. Seek each other out, discuss positive and less positive things with each other and learn from them. Together.

The overall tip? Certainly not a do-over. Take every meeting seriously! They are actually all good for something and help you to achieve the end result on time, within budget and means. Avoid 'zombie meetings' because it's part of the job, and make sure there is an occasional humour or energyzer that does the interaction good! Don't we all need that after the days of online meetings? Go for more value! With your team. And make your 5 scrum events a success with these tips!

Want to know more about the scrum process? Download our cheat sheet in the Goldmine Downloads

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