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The Agile Scrum Sprint Retrospective Meeting is a crucial event where the Scrum Team reflects on the recent Sprint. The primary goal is to identify what went well, and what didn't, and how processes can be improved moving forward. This meeting fosters continuous improvement by encouraging open dialogue and collective problem-solving. Team members discuss their experiences, analyze workflows, and suggest actionable changes to enhance efficiency and collaboration in future Sprints. The Retrospective ensures that the team evolves and adapts, maintaining high performance and delivering greater value.

The Retrospect Sprint Meeting is an important element of the ‘inspect-adapt’ Scrum framework and it is the final step in a Sprint. All Scrum Team members attend the meeting, which is facilitated or moderated by the Scrum Master. It is recommended, but not required for the Product Owner to attend. One team member acts as the scribe and documents discussions and items for future action. It is essential to hold this meeting in an open and relaxed environment to encourage full participation by all team members. Discussions in the Retrospect Sprint Meeting encompass both what went wrong and what went right. The primary objectives of the meeting are to identify three specific things:

1) Things the team needs to keep doing: best practices

2) Things the team needs to begin doing: process improvements

3) Things the team needs to stop doing: process problems and bottlenecks

These areas are discussed and a list of Agreed Actionable Improvements is created.

Other tools used in the Process of Retrospect Sprint are:

1. ESVP

2. Speed Boat

3. Metrics and Measuring Techniques

4. Scrum Guidance Body Expertise

The outputs of the Retrospect Sprint are:

1. Agreed Actionable Improvements

2. Assigned Action Items and Due Dates

3. Proposed Non-Functional Items for Prioritized Product Backlog

4. Retrospect Sprint Log(s)

5. Scrum Team Lessons Learned

6. Updated Scrum Guidance Body Recommendations

The Scrum sprint retrospective meeting is a crucial part of the Agile development process, providing teams with an opportunity to reflect on their performance and identify areas for improvement. The meeting typically follows a structured format, starting with setting the stage by creating a positive and open atmosphere. Next, the team reviews the sprint, discussing what went well, what didn't, and any obstacles encountered. Facilitated discussion allows team members to share their perspectives and insights openly.

Sprint Planning Meeting

The Sprint Planning Meeting is the discussion held by a Scrum team with the goal of agreeing which task will be executed during a set sprint period. In preparing for the Sprint Planning Meeting the SCRUM Master needs to surround the team with the following artifacts and discussion elements:

1. Product Backlog

2. Sprint Backlog

3. Burn-down Chart

The Sprint Planning Meeting is attended by the Product Owner (voice of the customer), Scrum Master and the Development Team. This team discussion is convened to discuss/plan the execution of user stories over the current Sprint and is held in co-located facilities.

In this meeting, the product owner will be prepared to discuss or present enough product backlog items to fit known team’s sprint velocity and is concerned in communicating the sprint goal that will result in a shippable product.

The meeting is devoted to defining the sprint goal which together with the object definition – a Q & A period where the PO details his priorities, the team decomposes user stories from the Product Backlog and devotes time to estimation –where tasks are defined according to time/risk/complexity. Upon agreement a number of these are moved onto the current Sprint Backlog that the team will volunteer to work on and revisit during the sprint.

The Product Backlog

In the example above we have taken a snapshot of a Product backlog and its initial stages of decomposition. Please note that some of the entries were introduced not by the PO but by members of the development team as items found during refinement.

The Sprint Backlog

An output of the Sprint Review Meeting, the Sprint Backlog is shown above. There can be many varieties of what is listed but for the most part it identifies the User Story from where the task originated the description of the task, the status and the estimate value. The estimate is the measure of the task relative to the velocity and the team accomplishment value.

The Burn-down Chart

One of the best sprint status reporting artifacts, the Burn-down Chart is used to assess the success of the sprint remaining days relative to the target velocity. The chart is updated towards the end of the sprint day by the team deducting the amount of completed work from the sprint backlog. Unfinished tasks are moved back to the product backlog and may be prioritized on the next sprint iteration.