The sprint review meeting, or sprint demo as it is commonly called, is held at the end of each sprint and is time-boxed at up to four hours. The development team’s preparation time for the sprint meeting should not be more than an hour or two.
Presenting "Done" Work
The purpose of the sprint review is for the development team to present to the Product Owner and stakeholders what they accomplished during the last sprint. They will only present work that they consider done. Done means the work just completed is potentially shippable or ready for implementation by the user, and has been thoroughly designed, planned, coded, tested, debugged, and documented. The work has also been checked to see that it is compatible and can be inter-graded with work that has already been completed or is to be completed in the near future.
Only “done” items are discussed at the sprint review. Other tasks that were worked on during the sprint are not presented unless they are used to help explain the work that was just completed.
Getting Feedback
The main purpose of the sprint is to bring the Product Owner and stakeholders right up to date on the progress of the project, and for the development team to get their immediate feedback.
The sprint review meeting starts with one team member stating the sprint goal and the product backlog items the development team was committed to complete, and those actually completed during the last sprint. Other team members can then discuss what went well and what did not during the last sprint.
The majority of the sprint review meeting should be spent with the team describing what they just completed and getting feedback from the Product Owner and stakeholders. Typical questions the team should be interested in getting answers to are:
- What did the users like or dislike?
- What don’t they seem to understand?
- What do they want to be changed or deleted?
- What new things do they think would be good to add?
- Have their priorities changed?
- Do they have any ideas as to how the development team could better perform?
At the end of the presentation, the stakeholders should be polled individually to get answers to the above questions as well as any other comments they may have that might be helpful. One thing that should always be done at the end of any sprint review is reprioritization of the backlog report. Work that was not completed during the last sprint that was supposed to be will now most likely be moved to the top of the priority list for the next sprint.
Wrapping up the Sprint Review Meeting
A final point is that the Scrum Master should coordinate the setting up of the sprint review meeting. At the end of each sprint review meeting, he or she should announce the date, time, and location of the next sprint review meeting.
Shortly before that meeting is scheduled he or she should also E-mail stakeholders to let them know of the upcoming meeting and whether or not they will be attending. Based on the number of people attending, the Scrum Master should be sure they can be accommodated.
If a major problem comes up where only a few or no key people can attend, the Scrum Master should temporarily postpone the meeting for a short period of time. This should happen only rarely as Product Owner, and stakeholder feedback is critical if the development team is to do its’ job. The Product Owner and stakeholders must realize that their participation is necessary on a continuing basis. Everyone involved in the project should realize that each sprint is like an experiment. Once a sprint is completed everyone is needed to make decisions of where do we go from here.
Agile Methodology that Works Best for Your Organization's Needs
While Scrum framework, one of the popular Agile frameworks, has been adapted by many organizations, there are other Agile methodologies that have been proven to be the right choice for other companies.
Our comprehensive Agile knowledge library will guide you through various Agile frameworks and Agile Project Management practices to choose the right process that will adapt to your organization's needs.
For best results, contact our experienced Agile professionals that will walk you through the Readiness Assessment process to ensure the proper implementation of Agile in your organization.