5.5: Agile Events (Ceremonies) - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems

<v ->Now, let us talk about agile events.</v> Also known as ceremonies or just meetings. According to the scrum guide, the sprint is a container for all other events. Each event in scrum is a formal opportunity to inspect and adapt scrum artifacts. Previously events were called ceremonies, to show that they are defined to enable transparency and it is not recommended to change their structure or their philosophy. Sprints are the heartbeat of scrum, where ideas are turned into value. They're all fixed length events. Usually they take one months, but ideally, definitely less than that. The most popular duration of sprint is two weeks. A new sprint starts immediately, after the conclusion of the previous sprints. All the work necessary to achieve the product goal, including sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review, and sprint retrospective, all of it happens within the sprint. As sprint could be canceled only if the sprint gold becomes obsolete, and only the product owner has the authority to cancel the sprint. Sprint planning indicates that the sprint has started and it lays out the work to be performed for the sprint. This results in creating the collaborative work by the entire scrum team. The product owner ensures that attendees of the sprint planning meeting are prepared to discuss the most important product backlog items. And also they look at how those items map back to the product goals so that they do not lose track of the big picture. The scrum team may also invite other people to attend sprint planning so that they can provide them with their advice. Sprint planning is timeboxed to a maximum of eight hours for a one-month sprint, but usually it's shorter. The purpose of the daily scrum is to inspect progress against the sprint goal and adapt the sprint backlog as necessary adjusting the upcoming planned work. The daily scrum is a 15-minute event. It cannot be one hour, even half an hour is too long because the only requirement is to allow the team to collaborate, align, and remove what are next for each other. To reduce complexity, the daily scrum is held at the same time and place every working day of the sprint. If the product owners scrum master actively working on the items in this sprint backlog, they participate as developers as well. But usually it is for the development team. The purpose of the sprint review is to inspect the outcome of the sprint and define future adaptations and changes. This scrum team presents the results of their work at the sprint review and the key stakeholders usually give them their feedback. During this event, the scrum team and stakeholders review what was accomplished in the sprint, what has changed, and based on this information, they decide on what's coming next. The product backlog may also be adjusted to meet those new opportunities. The sprint reviews and working session and the scrum team should avoid anything that is a presentation or that is not working software. The purpose of the sprint retrospective is to plan different ways to increase quality and effectiveness. At their retrospective, the scrum team inspect how the last sprint went with regards to individuals, interactions, processes, tools, and their definition of done. As you may have recalled, definition of done represents the work that is ready to be shipped to the customer. Inspected elements always vary with the domain of work. The scrum team discusses what went well during the sprint, what problems they encountered, and how those problems were solved. The scrum team identifies the most helpful changes to improve its effectiveness. The most impactful improvements addressed, as soon as possible. They may even be added for some teams to the product backlog for the next sprint. The sprint retrospective concludes the sprint. It is timeboxed to a maximum of three hours for a one=month sprint, but usually it is one hour. For shorter sprints, the event is obviously shorter. Together all these events produce one sprint in scrum and many of them, such as the retrospectives are used outside of scrum in other agile frameworks.