Introduction:
Are you worried and having a tough time in managing a sprint review? If yes then you have landed to the right page as today our topic of discussion is about how you can hold a sprint review effectively without any problems. Now before moving further, let us take have a quick look as to what a sprint review is. To those who don’t know, a sprint review is a kind of an informal meeting which the development team, the scrum master, product owner, and the stakeholders have to attend. In this informal meeting, the team gives a proper demo on the product and all the members determine what is finished and what is left to be done. It usually takes place at the end of the sprint and the purpose of the sprint review is to gather all the actionable feedback on what the team has or hasn’t completed. The duration of the sprint is a maximum of four hours for a one-month Sprint. But if the duration of the sprint is shorter, then the meeting duration would also be short.
Now that we know what a sprint review is, let us take a look at some effective ways that can help us effectively run it.
Ways to effectively run a sprint meeting:
The following are some effective ways or tips that you can follow and run your sprint meeting more effectively.
Always make an agenda and follow it no matter what:
The best way to do anything is to first make a plan and then tell yourself and the whole team to follow it no matter what. Now for the sprint review, make a list of the things that you are going to do during the sprint. For example, first, you will review the results of the sprint. Next, you will demonstrate the work, after that, you will gather feedback from the team and lastly update the project and plan for future work. Now suppose, this is your whole plan that you will be implementing during the sprint, what you should do is follow it from start to end no matter what. If you are determined enough to follow the whole plan in sequence, your team will follow you as well and will be conscious enough to listen to you carefully.
Time-box the whole sprint:
One of the best ways to keep everyone motivated and on track is to time-box the meeting. That is, keep the meeting short and stay to the course and tell everyone the ending time of the team at the beginning of the meeting. This will keep them focused and they will listen to you even more carefully as they now know that the time is short and they have to make the most out of this time.
Don’t waste time in speaking the technical language:
As said earlier, the meeting is short and many things are to be discussed so everyone is advised to be very specific and stay on track. But another thing that no one bothers to notice is that the team while explaining the work in front of everyone frequently uses technical terms that are unknown to the stakeholders and PO who are in the meeting as well. Now, these people don’t even know the ABCs of these technical terms let alone understand them. This causes a lot of confusion and time is wasted explaining everything again in simple English. So to avoid this type of situation, the team should focus on speaking simple English and avoid using such technical terms that are hard to understand.
Make your scrum team and the stakeholders collaborate:
There are stakeholders as well in the sprint review along with the scrum master and the scrum team. Usually what happens is that the stakeholders only team up with the scrum master and the team also shares its concern with the scrum master. Its always desired by a Certified Scrum Master to align the team with stakeholders. To get certified, validate the skills using CSM Practice Test and appear for real exam. This means that there is no direct collaboration with the scrum team and the stakeholders. So as their manager, you should make them collaborate and share their viewpoints and start a conversation. This will open new topics for discussion and everybody gets to know each other as well.
Avoid critical judgment:
As you know feedback is very important for improvement but if it is being used to disrespect other people’s work and effort, then it is not a healthy activity. So we would suggest here to use only constructive feedback and avoid any type of critical judgment that can change the work environment. Alternate option for Scrum Certification is from Scrum. org, checkout PSM dumps to improve your skills.
Give your team the ownership of their task:
Many managers find it more convenient to present a work on their own instead of letting the team that has done all the effort present. Now, this is not a quality of a good leader or manager as a good leader encourages his team to take the wheel. So what you should be doing is let your team members present their own user stories. It will not only give them experience and confidence to interact directly with the end-user but also allow them to take ownership of the task at hand. Moreover, this step will also make them feel that their work counts here. So yes, don’t try to do everything on your own and try to delegate work to your team as a scrum master and let them interact with the end-user on their own.
Conclusion:
Though these few ways or tips may seem very basic to you but trust us once you start implementing these one-by-one, you’d start to feel the change in the way the meeting runs. So we would suggest you read this whole topic with full concentration and highlight all those ways that you haven’t tried in your meeting. Start implementing them gradually and we bet you’ll feel a change here and your meetings will start to run effectively from now on. So, learn how to run a sprint review meeting effectively by reading this topic, stay safe, and never stop learning.
