Scrum Retrospective

When the sprint ends in Scrum, it is time for the team to present their work to the Product Owner for approval. This process is known as the sprint review meeting. In this meeting, the Product Owner reviews the stories assigned for the sprint and asks the team to present the work. The Product Owner checks the work to ensure that it has addressed all the acceptance criteria described in the product back-order item. (In some cases, a team may have met all the criteria, but the final product is still not what the product owner wants. In such a case, the team will receive points for creating a product that meets the acceptance criteria. , but the product owner would likely rewrite the story for the team to address in the next sprint). Even if a team completes 99 percent of a story, the product owner must reject it as incomplete. Many teams find that the final touches on a product are often the most labor and time consuming, so giving partial credit for unfinished work can contribute to misleading speed. This is the “inspect” phase of Scrum’s inspect and adapt approach to software development.

After the sprint review meeting, the team holds a retrospective Scrum meeting with the ScrumMaster. At this point, the team discusses three things: what went well, what didn’t go well, and what improvements could be made in the next sprint. Because the Product Owner does not attend this meeting, it is an opportunity to talk candidly about successes and failures. This is an especially important opportunity for the team to focus on its overall performance and identify strategies to improve its processes. Likewise, it is a valuable opportunity for the ScrumMaster, who can look at common impediments affecting the team and work to resolve them. This meeting, which typically has a three-hour time limit, represents the “adaptation” phase of the inspection and adaptation approach.

In summary, the Scrum method of agile software development uses the sprint review and retrospective scrum meetings to reinforce Scrum’s emphasis on transparency and communication. By formalizing communication with these meetings, Scrum ensures that all team members are informed and connected.