Dear Reader, if you would like to learn what Agile is, what Scrum is, what Sprint is, and what Scrum Framework is all about...
Or, if you want to learn more about User Story Acceptance Criteria, Sprint Retrospective, Sprint Planning, and Sprint Grooming, then we invite you to read these linked articles.
In them, we introduce the most important concepts related to Agile and Scrum, that is, the methodology and framework, which are among the most popular within the Agile methodology.
In this article, we'll add another topic to our "knowledge stack" about the Scrum framework and Agile methodologies. Namely, we'll take a closer look at the Sprint Review.
Scrum is often associated with four events: Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-up Meetings, Sprint Retrospective, and Sprint Review.
All events have a specific meaning and a role to fulfill and are characterized by particular benefits.
Why is it worth performing a Sprint Review? What is the purpose of a Sprint Review?
What benefits does the team gain when performing the Sprint Review? And what is the Sprint Review?
The above questions, because of the popularity of Sprint Reviews, certainly deserve attention and broader clarification.
In particular, since Sprint Review is sometimes equated with Sprint Retrospective, which is incorrect.
In reality, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective are separate operations that, although similar to some degree — have different goals, functions, and effects in the process of creating digital products.
It's worth being aware of these differences; hence, we recommend you to read this article in which we'll try to clearly indicate all the common characteristics but, most of all, differences.
We cordially invite you to read on!
We Audit. We Research. We Design.
The Sprint Review — what is it?
In the article "Agile sprint reviews. Three steps for better sprint reviews with your agile team", the Sprint Review is defined as an informal meeting/event whose main goal is "demonstrating the hard work of the entire team: designers, developers, and the product owner."
Sprint Review usually happens at the end of a Sprint, and it's used to show what was achieved. The main goal is not only to present results (a potentially shippable product increment) but discuss them with stakeholders.
The Sprint Review should have — according to "The 2020 Scrum Guide's" interpretation — a more working character than a presentational one.
In other words, the Sprint Review is used, on the one hand, to familiarize stakeholders with the progress of the work, to show the increment, and to determine the state the project is currently in.
On the other hand, Sprint Review serves to obtain feedback from stakeholders. Or, to put it differently, Sprint Review is also used to check if the work meets completion and acceptance criteria.
It definitely is not a situation of one-sided communication of results. It's a symmetrical exchange that aims to initiate discussion, determine priorities, indicate problems, and discuss the way of their solution.
In "The 2020 Scrum Guide", the goal of the Sprint Review is defined as follows "The purpose of the Sprint Review is to inspect the outcome of the Sprint and determine future adaptations."
The relationship-based nature of Scrum Review, based on close collaboration between the Scrum team and stakeholders, is heavily emphasized in the official Scrum Guide.
Its authors directly write:
During the event, the Scrum Team and stakeholders review what was accomplished in the Sprint and what has changed in their environment.
Based on this information, attendees collaborate on what to do next. The Product Backlog may also be adjusted to meet new opportunities.
The Sprint Review is a working session, and the Scrum Team should avoid limiting it to a presentation.
Who attends the Sprint Review?
The Sprint Review is usually attended by a Product Owner, Scrum Master, Scrum Team (research, design, development team), and key stakeholders. Here stakeholders are understood very broadly.
As we've mentioned above, the goal of the Sprint Review meeting is to communicate, show the state of the work, and obtain feedback.
The informality of the Sprint Review is to be understood as an event, a situation which — although it usually occurs in a pretty similar way — doesn't have a formalized, defined structure.
So, it can look slightly different, in terms of details, in various teams.
With that said, the Sprint Review meeting agenda usually contains the following elements:
- Presentation of the Product Backlog regarding the statuses of given tasks — whether they're done, in progress, or whether they're yet to be started
- Discussion of problems, obstacles, and challenges
- Indication of elements that didn't cause many issues to the team; they were completed satisfactorily
- Discussion of increments
- Definition of objectives — in different time perspectives
- Discussion of challenges and how to manage problems
- Discussion of occurred changes in a broader context regarding market, technology, or project.
In short, during the Sprint Review meeting, Product Owner discusses the Product Backlog, and the development team demonstrates what was done and what increment was achieved.
The Sprint Review is, which is pretty clear from the above, focused on improving the Product Backlog, thanks to which the next Sprint and the upcoming Sprint planning meeting are also improved.
The Sprint Review also allows you to react to changes in the team, project, market, business environment, and business goals.
When new opportunities appear, you can use them and account for them.
How long does the Sprint Review last?
The informality of the Sprint Review is also seen in the time devoted to performing it.
Authors of the abovecited "The 2020 Scrum Guide" suggest that the Sprint Review should be limited to maximally four hours in the case of a 1-month Sprint. In the case of shorter Sprints, the event is usually shorter.
As a rule and in practice, there are no rigidly defined timeframes, but it's widely accepted that the Sprint Review is an event that shouldn't be prolonged.
And instead, you should strive to minimize its duration. Hence, Sprint Reviews usually last a couple or a couple of dozen minutes. Naturally, some situations require setting aside more time.
The length of the Sprint Review depends mainly on the following:
- Level of project complexity
- Degree of complexity of problems
- Amount of people actively participating in it
- Regularity of the Reviews — the more often they're organized, the less time they usually take
- Method of its organization — Sprint Review meetings are increasingly more often conducted in an asynchronous form
- Goals that are supposed to be discussed or defined during a given Sprint Review.
Main goals of the Sprint Review
It's worth taking a moment to look at the goals of Reviews because, to a large extent, they determine the regularity and duration of Sprint Reviews.
The Sprint Review isn't exclusively about the actualization of statuses or familiarizing stakeholders with work results.
It's more important to obtain feedback that allows you to plan better subsequent Sprints and manage the Backlog.
Getting the most precise Product Backlog is also a significant objective that enables you to improve efficiency, effectiveness, cooperation, and project management.
One of the goals of the Sprint Review — in the most general, universal sense — is access to crucial information that enables you to make more accurate, rational, beneficial (from many perspectives) project, business, and organizational decisions.
Changes in the environment communicated early, discussed, and problematized in the Sprint Review allow you to react effectively, adapt, and determine more specific goals and means of achieving them.
It's essential to share common perspectives, expectations, goals, values, and information — synchronizing these issues enables you to develop more convenient ways of cooperation.
It's worth emphasizing — which we've mentioned — the working character of the Review.
The working nature of the Sprint Review means that its goal is to exchange information, opinions, evaluations, and ideas as well as make biding decisions that will determine the course of further work and define the scope of time and tasks in the project.
Active involvement of every participant of the Sprint Review is essential and desirable. The effectiveness and reasonableness of organizing Sprint Reviews depend only on the engagement of all participants.
It's worth remembering that due to its working nature and the presence of external stakeholders in relation to the team, the Sprint Review is one of the most important ceremonies, events in the Scrum framework.
The objective of the Review is to make decisions based on various sources of information and different data, and goals. Confronting them allows you to plan the work better, evaluate its quality and efficiency, and determine directions.
A crucial effect of the Sprint Review is that stakeholders can feel like a part of the project — like its vital, essential element whose needs and goals are considered and executed.
This psychological effect can't be downplayed because the sense of agency, importance, and decisiveness influence the level of stakeholders' engagement.
It affects the quality of the digital product, although not always in a visible way.
Besides quality, a crucial effect of Sprint Reviews is building teams (Scrum Teams) that effectively communicate and cooperate and that can openly react to external needs and expectations.
What is the difference between the Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective?
As a reminder, we've written a separate article about the Sprint Retrospective.
Here, to not repeat ourselves, we'll focus on how these two events differ and why they shouldn't be treated as synonyms.
As we've written many times before, Scrum focuses on self-improvement and continuous development. It's aimed at deepening the awareness of teams and individual members.
To put it bluntly, Scrum is about self-improvement, becoming a better developer, designer, researcher, and product manager who can learn from their successes and mistakes. Who can cooperate and work in a team and with a team.
Scrum Retrospective is an event whose main goal is to determine means and methods, techniques, or, generally speaking, tools that will allow Scrum and the development team to improve their results.
It's precisely thanks to Scrum Retrospectives that tasks, processes, and individual operations presumably will work more efficiently and effectively.
In other words, the Retrospective is about finding an even more optimal workflow that is never as good as not to be improved.
Techniques used in Scrum Retrospectives (e.g., Start, Stop, Continue Retrospective, Hands on Deck Retrospective, Hot Air Balloon Retrospective) allow you to make each following Sprint more perfect.
In particular, in terms of efficiency, smoothness of task performance, rationality, up-to-dateness, harmony, and work coordination.
Then how does the Sprint Retrospective differ from Sprint Review regarding details?
First of all, the Sprint Review occurs before the Sprint Retrospective. The next fundamental difference is the goal that is supposed to be achieved by them.
The goal of the Sprint Review is, as we've mentioned, a discussion, exchange, and feedback from stakeholders.
The Review is about confronting what was already achieved and what was not with needs, expectations, and goals.
The main question you should ask during the Sprint Review is, "What do we build?" During the Review, the increment receives special "care."
The Sprint Retrospective aims to focus on the means of achieving objectives, how the team works, how it handles tasks or doesn't, what internal and external problems it faces, and what problems it creates during interactions.
The main question you should ask during the Sprint Retrospective is, "How do we build?" During the Retrospective, the process of working and cooperation receives special "care."
Thus, the difference is fundamental. In the case of the Sprint Review, the team confronts internal stakeholders. In the case of the Sprint Retrospective, it focuses on the dynamics and interaction structure that occurs within it.
In other words, both events differ in the following:
- Participants — stakeholders are invited to Reviews, scrum team attends Retrospectives.
- Goals — the objective of the Review is to obtain a common perspective and compatibility of goals between the scrum team and stakeholders. At the same time, the Retrospective aims to improve the functioning of the scrum team.
- Results — the result of the Sprint Review is the actualization of the Product Backlog, and the result of the Retrospective is the development of new ways of cooperation, which are supposed to improve the workflow within the scrum team.
Thus, Reviews are focused on stakeholders and Retrospectives on scrum teams.
This vast difference in goals, methods, results, and participants means these two events shouldn't be combined. It's definitely more recommended to separate them.
The Sprint Review is an event in which questions, answers, observations, suggestions, evaluations, ideas, discussion, and diagnoses are its main "content."
The course of the Sprint Review
Is there a standard way for conducting Sprint Reviews? No, there isn't. However, it doesn't mean that it's an event that can be done in any way or randomly.
A successful Sprint Review should be performed according to a previously prepared plan and documented with a protocol.
Recording the Sprint Review is not an unusual practice either, especially when some stakeholders can't be present in person and want to have the opportunity to attend asynchronously.
Documenting Reviews has advantages and value in the form of easy access to the context of made decisions. It allows new stakeholders to familiarize themselves with all participants' arguments, problems, remarks, suggestions, and reactions expressed during the entire process.
As a rule, the Sprint Review includes the following:
- Presentation of the Review's agenda, in particular, the introduction of goals, results, and plans to participants
- Display of results — increments of the product along with a presentation of demos
- Expression and aggregation of feedback
- Presentation of the Product Backlog, in particular, new release plans and goals with assumed implementation dates
- Discussion of results and plans
- Decisions regarding further actions.
Thus, a typical Sprint Review involves presenting performed work (in particular, new functionalities implemented in the digital product), familiarizing with market changes (technological, project, and business), and introducing plans with deadlines.
The Sprint Review is also used to discuss ideas for new functionalities as well as establish the order of the implementation of the subsequent functionalities and the scope of the implementation in future Sprints.
During the Sprint Review, discussing the schedule of planned releases is essential.
When planning or performing the Sprint Review, you must remember that the essence of the Scrum framework is to guarantee visibility and increase control over the process and its elements.
The Sprint Review event allows you to make these goals a reality. Simultaneously it's an event that enables you to confront the results of the work with the expectations and perceptions of stakeholders.
The main advantages of the Sprint Review are the improvement of the following:
- Communication and understanding
- Adequacy of the digital product in relation to expectations
- Improved time and budget management during the Sprint (management process)
- Speed and accuracy of reactions to changes
- Consistency of coordination and work synchronization
- Understanding of the project vision
- Precision of goals.
Best practices for running a successful Sprint Review
To conclude this article, we would also like to present helpful best practices that we found on the Atlassian blog in the article "Agile sprint reviews."
Namely, Dan Radigan, the author of the article, recommends the following steps to take in order to achieve a successful Sprint Review:
1. Determine the Definition of Done and acceptance criteria.
The Definition of Done and clear acceptance criteria help the team work towards the set goal. Thanks to that, they don't work in the dark and eliminate as many ambiguities as possible.
2. Celebrate the team.
It's an excellent opportunity to celebrate the team's accomplishments. Since Sprints are generally a collaborative effort, it's essential to maintain the high spirit of your team. The Sprint Review is also a great time for some team-building activities.
3. Reach across geographies.
This advice can be especially important for distributed teams. The Atlassian solution for teams scattered across the globe is to, for example, record informal videos and share them on a shared platform so that everybody is up to date regardless of time zones.
Sprint Review. Summary
- The Scrum framework consists of four main events: Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-up Meetings, Sprint Retrospective, and Sprint Review.
- The Sprint Review is defined as an informal event whose goal is to demonstrate the hard work of the entire team: designers, developers, and product owners.
- In "The 2020 Scrum Guide", the goal of the Sprint Review is defined as follows "The purpose of the Sprint Review is to inspect the outcome of the Sprint and determine future adaptations."
- The Sprint Review should have a more working character than a presentational one.
- The essence of the Sprint Review is a symmetrical exchange that aims to initiate discussion, determine priorities, indicate problems, and examine ways of solving them.
- The Sprint Review involves a Product Owner, Scrum Master, Scrum Team, and broadly defined stakeholders.
- The Sprint Review allows you to react to changes that occur in the team, project, market, business environment, and business goals.
- The goal of the Sprint Review is access to crucial information, which allows you to make more accurate, rational, and beneficial development, project, business, and organizational decisions.
- The level of engagement of all Sprint Review participants directly influences this event's effectiveness and usefulness.
- The main goal of the Scrum Retrospective is to determine the set of means, methods, techniques, and tools which will allow the Scrum and development team to improve their results.
- The goal of the Sprint Review is a discussion, exchange, and feedback from stakeholders. The Review is about confronting what was already achieved and what was not with needs, expectations, and goals.
- The Sprint Retrospective aims to focus on the means of achieving objectives, how the team works, how it handles tasks or doesn't, what internal and external problems it faces, and what problems it creates during interactions.
- Documenting the Review allows stakeholders to familiarize themselves with the participants' arguments, problems, remarks, suggestions, and reactions expressed during the entire process.
