These five tips will make your Agile sprint review effective.
This video is all about the agile sprint review and how to get better feedback out of it. But rather than going through generic tips, I’m going beyond the typical tips and tricks you found in most textbooks about how to improve your agile sprint review meeting. I’m going beyond what the Scrum guide says, with 5 amazingly powerful tips to help you get better feedback from your Scrum process. Implementing those ideas will make your agile feedback loop much more effective!
- Tip #1 Not just a demo. The sprint review is often seen as just a demo, but it’s lot more than that. It’s about inspection more than simply demonstrating the work done.
- Tip #2 The Product Owner should own the review. As the name implies, the product owner “owns the product” and should naturally lead the event. This will help make the PO claim ownership of their product.
- Tip #3 Perhaps a controversial one: Take time in between sprints. It’s not what the Scrum guide says, but starting a new sprint straight after the previous one finishes leaves little space for studying and analyzing what has just been delivered. I’m not talking about slack time here; I’m talking about taking the time to understand and learn if what has been delivered value.
- Tip #4 Address agile discovery, not just agile delivery. This tip is about making the sprint review, not just about showing what has been implemented and what hasn’t. It’s beneficial to also talk about the discovery work as well. Innovators and product people typically love this aspect of the work as well.
- Tip #5 Discuss the direction of what to do next. This is not about skipping ahead to sprint planning, but more about setting the high-level goal for the next sprint. As the team and PO just inspected the current sprint, now is the best time to set the direction for what to do next, both from a discovery and delivery perspective.