Scrum Meetings

Agile Scrum meetings are part of the day-to-day engagement activities of a Scrum process. Scrum is the earliest and most popular agile framework for managing IT product development. 

Extreme Programming, Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM), Disciplined Agile (DA), Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Large Scale Scrum (LeSS), etc., are other popular agile frameworks.

Every morning, the development team and the Scrum master gather around a Scrum board, and all team members have a few minutes to explain their progress toward the sprint goal. 

Most agile teams are co-located because they require face-to-face communication. However, in some cases, Agile team can have virtual team members.

A Scrum team comprises the product owner, the Scrum master, and the development team. They work together to deliver a working product. 

Agile methodology has many frameworks. Scrum is one such agile framework project management teams use for IT-related projects. They break the project into parts and complete them individually quickly.

What is an Agile Scrum Meeting?

During the product development process, the team conducts various meetings, and these meetings are knowns as Agile Scrum meetings.

These meetings cover issues related to sprint planning and other engagement sessions like daily standup meetings, retrospectives, product demonstrations, etc. Each meeting has different objectives, such as receiving feedback, planning, knowledge transfer, etc.

All scrum meetings have ground rules, such as fixed meeting duration, no personal comments, and punctuality. In most cases, the Scrum master leads these meetings and represents servant leadership.

Before we discuss the types of scrum meetings, let’s review a few roles and terminology in the scrum framework.

  • Scrum Master: The team leader keeps the team focused on its goals and ensures it adheres to agile principles.
  • Product Owner: This is a business-oriented team member who works with the team and client to help prioritize the backlog from the business perspective.
  • Development Team: This self-organizing and cross-functional team delivers a sprint release.
  • Product Backlog: This prioritizing tool helps the team deliver the highest value without creating waste.
  • Servant Leader: This is a coach and impediment remover. In most cases, the scrum master plays this role.
  • Sprint: This is a time-boxed cycle on which scrum is run to deliver a shippable product increment.
  • Working Product: This product is being developed, and feedback is received.

Agile Scrum meetings are also known as Scrum ceremonies or Scrum events.

Types of Agile Scrum Meetings

Type of Scrum Meetings

The followings are key scrum meetings:

  1. Daily Standup Meeting
  2. Sprint Retrospective
  3. Sprint Planning
  4. Demonstration/Review
  5. Backlog Refinement

#1. Daily Standup Meeting

This scrum event is also called Daily Scrum or Scrum Huddle. The duration of the standup meeting is 15 minutes.  In this meeting, the Scrum team reviews progress from the previous day, decides on activities for the current day, and highlights any encountered or anticipated impediments.

Team members answer the following questions:

  1. What did we do yesterday?
  2. What will we work on today?
  3. What are the impediments?

The meeting has a fixed duration of 15 minutes to stop team members from losing focus and possibly becoming a status meeting. Note that daily scrum is not for reporting status updates. If the team requires more brainstorming, they can use the parking lot (which occurs after the stand-up).

Any team member can conduct daily Scrums. The benefits of this meeting are:

  • It helps team members micro-commit to each other – Question (2) above addresses this. Since trust is integral to Agile, team members ensure they deliver as expected.
  • It uncovers problems quickly and minimizes waste – Waiting is software waste and Question (3) above helps achieve this, where the scrum master quickly intervenes and removes impediments preventing the workflow.
  • It ensures a smooth workflow by connecting the past and present with potential barriers. So the team can look ahead.
  • It keeps the team on track and provides transparency to avoid surprises.

One major anti-pattern of daily stand-up is its tendency to become a status meeting. The facilitator must avoid focusing on status and consider the three guiding questions above.

The daily stand-up improves the flow and visibility, like the Kanban board. In addition, it promotes face-to-face communication, which is the most efficient form of communication.

#2. Sprint Retrospective

This scrum meeting helps improve the product.

Here, the team asks the questions: 

  • How do we work better?
  • What could be improved?

Sprint retrospective meeting is a process-improvement opportunity by inspecting and adapting. For example, one of the agile manifestos says, “At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.”

You can conduct a retrospective meeting every two weeks, as most iterations take this long. A retrospective is a kaizen concept for continuous improvement using Deming’s plan-do-study-act (PDSA) model.

scum meeting pdsa

It is time to act on what is and is not working to improve efficiency.  It is not a blame session but an opportunity to look back and improve specific action items.

Retrospective meetings help identify improvements and experiment with them by setting goals.

A retrospective helps organizational learning as the continuous loop involves experimentation. 

You can even use it to guard against knowledge loss, for example, when you contract a Subject Matter Expert (SME) to deliver on a task. He can share his knowledge by inviting them to the recurring retrospective.

You can use a retrospective for quality purposes. For example, during the meeting, you conduct root cause analysis to address quality issues from customer feedback (after a demonstration). 

#3. Sprint Planning

In sprint planning, the entire scrum team defines the sprint goal and plans the next sprint iteration. The team performs detailed planning at the beginning of each iteration, identifying the necessary work items and the required tasks.

In a sprint planning meeting, the entire Scrum team, including the Scrum Product Manager, Scrum Master, and the Scrum Team, review projects’ backlog items and decide and prioritize the items for the next sprint.

The entire team decides what product backlog items can be added to the sprint backlog and create a list of user stories to be worked on. This is called a sprint goal that provides a functional product at the end of the sprint.

Here the team assigns tasks to team members. You must consider team capacity to avoid burnout, poor quality, and poor performance. Sprint planning has acceptability among all team members since they (particularly the developers) are part of the planning.

Two questions get answered here:

  1. What is to be done?
  2. How will it be done?

It is also called iteration planning. This meeting helps clarify requirements on the backlog items and acceptance criteria.

Some activities of this meeting are:

  • Clarification of work (by the product owner)
  • Creating the Definition of Done (DoD) (by the development team)
  • Estimating the work (by the development team since they will be the doer)

The scrum master facilitates the Sprint Planning meeting. 

#4. Demonstration/Review

This scrum meeting helps receive feedback from stakeholders. The scrum team demonstrates the new features added to the product and collects feedback. Every sprint ends with a sprint review meeting and then a sprint retrospective.

The sprint review meeting lets the entire team demonstrate the software’s working model to the stakeholders. 

Frequent demonstrations of product increments help identify threats and opportunities. This is what makes Agile different from the waterfall.

Positive feedback implies that the development is going in the right direction. Also, negative feedback is a warning signal and prevents the team from making errors.

#5. Backlog Refinement

In backlog refinement, the product owner works with the team to understand a user story and prepares it for implementation. Here, you define the definition of ready (DoR) for each story item. Backlog Refinement is called Look-ahead Planning because it prepares the backlog for the next iteration.

This is an important meeting as it helps eliminate the waste of waiting by detecting missing information or the availability of people or resources early.

This meeting also helps identify dependencies between work items, which helps prioritize tasks. This reduces the sprint iteration planning sessions.

However, it could distract the team from delivering work in the current iteration if not correctly handled.

Note that the backlog refinement meeting is not an official Scrum ceremony in the Scrum Guide.

Tools Used for Agile Scrum Meetings

Scrum methodology has revolutionized software development, focusing on iterative development, flexibility, and collaboration. Scrum meetings are key to agile success, and you can use many tools to streamline the meeting experience for colocated and virtual teams.

Some commonly used tools to conduct scrum meetings are as follows:

Digital Collaboration Platforms

Digital collaboration platforms provide a centralized hub for team communication, file sharing, and task management. Examples of popular collaboration platforms include Microsoft Teams, Slack, Asana, and Trello.

These platforms offer real-time messaging, video conferencing, document sharing, and integration with other tools, enabling seamless collaboration and information sharing among team members.

Agile Project Management Tools

Agile project management tools are designed to support Agile methodologies like Scrum. These tools facilitate project planning, backlog management, sprint tracking, progress visualization, etc.

Jira, Azure DevOps, monday.com, and Basecamp are examples of widely used Agile project management tools. They provide user story management, sprint planning boards, burndown charts, and customizable workflows, enabling teams to manage and track their Agile projects effectively.

Video Conferencing Solutions

Due to distributed and remote teams, video conferencing solutions have become essential for Agile Scrum meetings. These tools allow team members to communicate face-to-face, regardless of location. 

Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Cisco Webex are popular video conferencing solutions that offer features like video calls, screen sharing, chat functionality, and virtual whiteboards. Video conferencing fosters real-time collaboration, promotes active participation, and helps maintain the human connection necessary for effective teamwork.

Task Management and Tracking Tools

Task management and tracking tools are instrumental in Agile Scrum meetings to manage and monitor the progress of work items and tasks. Trello, Asana, KanbanFlow, and MeisterTask are examples of such tools. They provide visual boards, customizable workflows, task assignments, and progress-tracking features. These tools allow Scrum teams to organize their work, visualize task dependencies, and ensure transparency and accountability within the Scrum framework.

Considerations for Tool Selection

When selecting tools for Agile Scrum meetings, consider the Scrum team size and distribution, scalability, user-friendliness, budget, etc. 

Evaluating the tool’s compatibility with existing infrastructure and the learning curve for team members is crucial to ensure successful adoption and utilization.

Best Practices for Holding Agile Scrum Meetings

To complete the project successfully, the Scrum team and other stakeholders must be on the same page.

The following practices can help you conduct successful Scrum meetings:

  • Stick to the agenda, control the conversation, and do not let the meeting go sideways 
  • Stick to the set duration, do not let the meeting overflow the duration 
  • Set the agenda and prioritize the topic to have a well-structured meeting
  • Discourage the blame game and emphasize issues

Benefits of Agile Scrum Meetings

The benefits of Scrum meetings are as follows:

  • Daily Scrum: It helps identify obstacles
  • Sprint Planning: Align the team with sprint priorities before the sprint starts
  • Sprint Retrospective: It helps the team review and improves their processes
  • Demonstration: It helps get product feedback from stakeholders
  • Backlog Refinement: Helps refine and prioritize user stories

FAQ on Agile Scrum Meeting

Q1: Who Leads the Scrum Meeting?

The Scrum master ensures that Scrum meeting occurs. The team can decide who will run the Scrum meeting. The Scrum master, product owner, and other team members can conduct the Scrum meeting.

Q2: What is the Best Time for Daily Scrum Meetings?

Morning is the best time to conduct the daily scrum meeting. This helps the team organize what they are supposed to do on the same day. Furthermore, they can clarify any doubts from the previous day.

Q3: What are the different Types of Scrum Meetings?

The five key scrum meetings are daily stand-up, retrospective, sprint planning, demonstration/review, and backlog refinement.

Summary

Meetings are an effective communication channel in project management. The Agile Scrum meetings help achieve agility, reduce waste, and improve the effectiveness of the Scrum team. These meetings play a crucial role in the success of software development projects by fostering collaboration, ensuring transparency, and promoting continuous improvement. Agile meetings require active participation, adherence to time-boxing principles, and visual tools such as Kanban boards and burndown charts.

Fahad Usmani, PMP

I am Mohammad Fahad Usmani, B.E. PMP, PMI-RMP. I have been blogging on project management topics since 2011. To date, thousands of professionals have passed the PMP exam using my resources.