Scrum Meetings - Do you know what to prepare for each meeting?

In Scrum, meetings are time boxed. Team members should be well prepared in order to accomplish the meeting goals in time. 

Daily Scrum Meetings

This is time boxed to 15 mins. All members of the team should be well prepared by:

• Being ready on time
• (If your team is estimating tasks) Having their "Remaining hours" up-to-date – read Do you update your tasks before the daily Scrum meeting?

• Be ready to answer the 3 main questions:

  • What did you do yesterday? e.g. "Yesterday I did xxx"
  • What are you doing today? e.g. "Today I will do yyy"
  • Do you foresee any impediments or roadblocks? e.g. "I might hit a roadblock today because of xxx"
• Remember to say "Let's park that conversation for after the Daily Scrum". Major discussions are not to be conducted during the time boxed Scrum meeting.
• Being online on Skype (especially for team members in different locations).

Sprint Review Meetings

All members of the team must be well prepared by:

• Deploying the latest iteration of the product
• Being available 30 minutes before the meeting
• Setting up and testing the projector with a computer before the meeting starts
• Making sure remote members are connected via Skype and/or TeamViewer before the meeting starts
• Nominating in advance another member of the team to take notes from the presentation
• Deciding, in advance, the order in which PBIs should be presented; priority, Sprint backlog order, logical order and minimizing presenter and presentation medium switching should be taken into account.

• Controlling the time spent on the PBI presentation

  • Practice the demo beforehand if needed to ensure a succinct delivery. This can be in the form of a pre-prepared video if desired
  • Inform the Product Owner what the main goal of the PBI is and tell if the team believe it was done or not
  • If the Product Owner previously saw what was done, ideally the member should just mention that and ask if the PBI is accepted
  • If the member needs to show something, show a couple of examples and ask if the Product Owner wants to see something else

Sprint Retrospective Meetings

All members of the team must be well prepared by:

• Having all your tasks from the last Sprint closed
• Having your Sprint feedback ready in advance, so members don’t need to think about it during the meeting, saving time
• Being clear and pointing out issues that need further discussions

Sprint Planning Meetings

All members of the team must be well prepared by:

• Having all bugs and PBIs up-to-date on the backlog
• Having all PBIs on the backlog “groomed” in order of priority (according to the Product Owner)
• Understanding all PBIs and the Product Owner’s priorities
• Being responsible on estimates
• Volunteering to work on PBIs and tasks, even if they are not related to your best skills – read Do you encourage multi-skilled teams?