What are Scrum Events?

A Scrum framework would be described as a sequence of time boxed events and their corresponding artifacts. This means that each even of the Scrum would be have a pre-defined maximum duration. These events would provide transparency on the project's progress to all the people who involved in the project.

These Events are also called as Ceremonies.

Scrum has five important events/ceremonies. They are -

• The Sprint
• Sprint planning
• Daily Scrum
• Sprint Review
• Sprint Retrospective

The Sprint

Sprint is an event that would contain all the work and all the other events that happen during a time boxed period of development. During a Sprint, a working product increment would be developed. The duration of the sprint would last for two weeks or one month. This duration would be common for all the sprints in the project. Once the current sprint is completely done, a new sprint would get started.

A Sprint must be cancelled if the Sprint Goal becomes outdated. This might occur when the organization changes its direction or when the market or technology changes. A sprint can be cancelled only by product owner, though others have an influence on the same.

As the sprints have a shorter duration, cancellation during a sprint rarely makes sense. As the sprint cancellations would consume resources, for getting re-organized into another Sprint, they are not so common.

If a Sprint is cancelled, and part of the work produced during the sprint is potentially releasable, the Product Owner typically must accept it. All the incomplete Sprint Backlog Items are put back into the Product Backlog.

Sprint Planning

Sprint Planning would be a kick start for each sprint, and this is where the development team and the Product Owner would have right to prioritize every Product Backlog Item in order to potentially include them in the sprint. Development team would be appreciated to respond, raise their concerns, and push back when really needed. The Development team would then forecast on the number of Product Back log items that they can deliver in a sprint provided they have knowledge of velocity and other factors which would influence the time and resources they have available for them.

Sprint Planning would focus on the following two questions -

• What needs to be and can be delivered in the Sprint Increment?
• How will the work needed for the execution of Sprint be achieved?

The inputs to this meeting are -

• The Product Backlog
• The latest product Increment
• Projected capacity of the Team during the Sprint
• Past performance of the Team

The output of the Sprint planning Meeting would be to get the Sprint Goal and Sprint Backlog that everyone agrees is realistic and achievable.

Daily Scrum

A Scrum would efficiently use your time and resources. The Daily Scrum event is not expected. Daily scrum would be time boxed to 15 minutes. Though Standing up is not mandatory, most of the teams would follow this as it would be helpful to keep the meeting short and up to the point. Daily Scrum would give the Development team an opportunity to check in, assess progress towards achieving the spirit goal and to review, plan the activities for the next 24 hours.

During the meeting, each Team member explains -

• What did he do yesterday that help the Team meet the Sprint Goal?
• What will he do today to help the Team meet the Sprint Goal?
• Does he see any impediments that prevent him or the Team from meeting the Sprint Goal?

Sprint Review

A Sprint Review is the event that actually takes place on the last day of the sprint and it would allow the opportunity to show that you are done with Increment to the stakeholders. And also, demonstrating the working features that were produced during the sprint. One would also be after the feedback that would be useful and that can be incorporated in the product Backlog which would help us guide the work for future sprints.

The Scrum Master ensures that -

• The meeting takes place.
• The participants understand the purpose.
• The meeting is focused on the required agenda and is completed within the required duration.

Sprint Retrospective

This would be the Final meeting in the Sprint. The Scrum team would review what could be improved for future sprints and how they should be done. The character of the Scrum would dictate that no matter how good the scrum team is, there would always be an opportunity to improve and the Sprint Retrospective would give the team a dedicated time in order to identify, discuss and plan it. The entire Scrum team would take part including the Development team, the scrum master, and the product owner. The meeting should be a collective effort similar to Agile and Scrum processes.

The purpose of the Sprint Retrospective is to -

• Combine the learnings from the last Sprint, with regards to people, relationships, process, and tools.
• Identify the major items that went well and potential improvements.
• Creation of a plan for implementing improvements to increase product quality.