One the key tools that we use when we work an Lean Agile (Scrum) implementation is the notion of a “cadence”. See What is the Benefit of Having a Cadence of Meetings Etc? for more on why this is important.
The following notes gives you some ideas of what your calendar looks like for a Team would look doing a “normal” Iteration (or Sprint); what meetings you should consider.
Note that there are a couple of assumptions here:
When you set up an Agile Team you will see the following events for a 2 week Iteration (Sprint):
Meeting | Cadence | Length | Purpose | Comments |
---|---|---|---|---|
Iteration Planning (or Sprint Planning) | First day of the Iteration | Max 2 hours | Team makes a reasonable commitment to complete a set of work by the end of the Iteration | For the next Iteration (Sprint), this can be scheduled either on the same day or the day after the Demo and Retro depending the timing of the demo. See How Do We Run Our First Iteration Planning (Sprint Planning)? for more information. |
Daily Standup (or Daily Scrum) | Every day of the Iteration | Max 15 mins | Team synchronizes their efforts in order to meet Iteration Goals | See What is the Purpose of a Daily Stand-up (Daily Scrums)? for more information. |
Mid-Iteration Review | Middle day of the Iteration | Max 1 hour | Team determines whether they are on course or whether they need to adjust | Most teams do not need this. It is used in environments where there is a lot of change. If teams do this a lot, they might want to consider 1 week iterations (or sprints). If used, it is combined with Backlog Refinement |
Backlog Refinement | Middle day of the Iteration | Max 2 hours | Team looks ahead to next Iteration to see if they are ready for Iteration Planning | Team works to get their stories to Definition of Ready (DoR)? |
Iteration Demo (or Sprint Review) | Last day of Iteration | Max 1 hour | Team provides “objective milestone” of progress and gets feedback from stakeholders | Create specific meeting that includes your stakeholders. See How Do We Run Our First Iteration Demonstation (Sprint Review)? for more information. |
Iteration Retrospective (or Sprint Retrospective) | Last day of Iteration | Max 1.5 hours | Team reflects on how to become more effective and adjusts its behavior accordingly | This event typically runs after the Demonstration so you can incorporate stakeholder feedback in your Retrospective. See How Do We Run Our First Iteration Retrospective (Sprint Retrospective) for more information. |
The following calendar shows the basic setup for a Iteration (Sprint) of 2 weeks.
Note that we try to set up Iteration (Sprint) so they start / end in the middle of the week …
Or “Why Don’t We Just End the Iteration of Friday, and start again on Monday?”
For many, it would be logical start and end an Iteration (Sprint) around week boundaries. In general this should be discouraged as:
It should be noted that some of this discussion is moot if you are on a Team which is part of a larger team-of-teams (Train) structure. In these cases you will need to align your cadence with that of the larger structure to ensure you can synchronize your activities with other members of the Train. That being said, the same thinking applies to Trains as Teams - we should avoid stating and stopping train event on weekend boundaries.