The 4 Scrum Ceremonies Made Simple. A Quick Guide To Scrum Meetings

Scrum ceremonies are important elements of the agile software delivery process. They are not just meetings for the sake of having meetings. Rather, these scrum ceremonies provide the framework for teams to get work done in a structured manner, help to set expectations, empower the team to collaborate effectively, and ultimately drive results. If they’re not managed appropriately, however, they can overwhelm calendars and drown out the value they are intended to provide.

These scrum ceremonies fulfill & enable several core/original principles. Often, when teams abandon certain ceremonies it’s because they don’t see the value in them anymore, which indicates they may have also abandoned the principles.

4 Scrum Ceremonies Made Simple

In this article, we will unpack the four scrum ceremonies, delving into their purpose, attendees, and tips & tricks to make them most effective. The four scrum ceremonies are:

1. Sprint Planning
2. Daily Scrum
3. Sprint Review
4. Sprint Retrospective

It is important to note that these ceremonies are specific to the scrum framework, an agile process that teams use around the world to build things that work. Scrum is intentionally lightweight and simple, but it can be difficult to master. It is intended to provide a framework for cross-functional teams to solve complex problems.

Simply put: scrum is a way to implement agile.

Conducting these meetings in isolation won’t automatically make your team agile. They have to be a part of a larger, well understood and articulated process. They should facilitate conversations within the agile team to get things done. And what kind of project manager doesn’t like to get things done?

Before we get too far, let’s quickly review the three scrum roles.

1. The Product Owner — This role represents the client and the business in general for the product on which they’re working. They own the backlog & strive to prioritize items to be worked on before every sprint. They make executive product decisions on a daily basis. Ultimately, they’re translating customer needs into actionable work items for the Development team.
2. The Scrum Master — This person is responsible for ensuring the team has everything they need to deliver value. They are a coach, counselor, advocate, impediment-remover, facilitator and mediator all rolled into one. They set up meetings and communicate progress and blockers. Hint: everything a project manager ought to be doing, just through the lens of scrum.
3. The Development Team — This is a group of cross-functional team members all focused on the delivery of working software. It is the singular noun for any developers, designers, QA and other technical roles that must collaborate on the actual development of a product. Ideally, this group of 5–9 people is fully dedicated to one scrum team. In reality, and especially at agencies, it might look a little bit different. The development team should to be self-organizing and motivated to provide value, and with proper facilitation by the Scrum Master and Product Owner, they can be.

Note: There are plenty of online resources and books for continued reading on scrum and the different roles. Let Google be your guide.

Each of these roles have unique participation in each of the scrum ceremonies. Through the application of these scrum meetings, each member of the scrum team should be empowered to do their best work. Every meeting is time-boxed, intentional, and in service to the overall scrum team. In other words, they exist to make delivering software possible. Without further ado, let’s dive in.

Read the full article to learn more:
- Sprint planning
- Daily scrum (daily standup)
- Sprint review
- Sprint retrospective
- Comparison chart

Originally published at www.thedigitalprojectmanager.com on June 5, 2018.