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Scrum Ceremonies
Scrum Ceremonies

Meetings that helps to share information to all team members and bring common goal, vision, and progress.

Alexander Sergeev avatar
Written by Alexander Sergeev
Updated over 5 years ago

There are four Scrum ceremonies that structure every sprint:

  • Sprint planning gathers a team for a planning meeting to determine what should be completed in the coming sprint.

  • Daily Stand-up or a Daily Scrum is aimed to sync the software team within 15-minutes. 

  • Sprint Demo represents a sharing meeting aimed to shows what team have shipped in that sprint.

  • Sprint retrospective is a review of what did go and what did not go well with actions. The main goal of this is to make the next sprint better.

All these ceremonies are inherent elements of the Agile software delivery process. 

Scrum ceremonies are not just meetings for having meetings. They should clearly provide teams with the frameworks to get work done in a structured way and inspire every team member to collaborate effectively, driving better results. Bad-managed ceremonies may overwhelm calendars and drown out the value.

Sprint Planning 

The main goal of this meeting is to set up the team for success throughout the sprint. The Sprint planning meeting requires the participation of a Scrum Master, Product Owner and the development team.

This ceremony happens just before the sprint begins. It usually lasts one to two hours.

The Product Owner should prepare a prioritized list of the product backlog items before coming into the Scrum planning meeting. He/she discusses all items or user stories with developers during the meeting and they all estimate the effort.

Kanban also has planning meetings, but they are not on a fixed iteration schedule with formal sprint planning.

Daily Stand-up 

This kind of meeting is aimed to inform all team members of what’s going on in a quick way. It should not be detailed and long. It's more about light and fun gathering (but informative).

During the Stand-up, all participants answer the following questions:

  • What did I complete yesterday?

  • What will I work on today?

  • Do I have any blocks?

The Daily Scrum occurs once a day. It's recommended to run it in the morning with the duration of no more than 15 minutes. The attendance of  Scrum Master, Product Owner, and the team.

Sprint Demo 

Every sprint ends with the demo of the newly developed features or a showcase of what the team worked on during the sprint.

The meeting is about celebrating the team's accomplishments, demonstrating work finished within the iteration and getting feedback from all stakeholders.

The duration of the Sprint Demo may vary depending on the number of items to highlight.

The work demonstrated should be clear and meet the team’s quality bar to be of any value and interest to others.

Sprint Retrospective 

The retrospective meeting typically occurs at the end of the sprint after the demo. It lasts for about 1 hour.

As Agile requires continuous improvement and getting rapid feedback, so Retrospective meetings help team members to understand what worked well and what did not.

The sprint retrospective is not about making complaints without taking action. It should identify what is working so the team can continue to focus on those areas.

Ready to implement Scrum methodology? Find out more in a guide How to Do Scrum with Hygger Software.

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