Meetings (Agile)
When your team practices Scrum, it will hold a set of meetings, and each meeting has a specific purpose and frequency. Your ScrumMaster should ensure that each meeting fulfills its intended purpose, considering the following guidelines:
The meeting agenda should be clear.
If team members start a discussion that does not address the purpose of the meeting, the members should take the discussion offline, to be completed later. The ScrumMaster should identify and indicate when team members should take a discussion offline.
All meetings should follow the basic structure that is described for that meeting.
Meetings should start on time, even if some team members are late.
Team members should be on time except in rare, unavoidable cases. If your schedule prevents you from being on time regularly, the conflict should be resolved as soon as possible. If necessary, the ScrumMaster should adjust the meeting time to resolve the conflict if the change does not unfairly inconvenience another member of the team.
Each team member should come to the meeting prepared.
Meetings should finish on time. In most cases, the length of the meeting is determined by the length of the sprint. For example, take two hours for a sprint planning meeting if the sprint is one week long and four hours if the sprint is two weeks long.
Scrum enforces this meeting structure to a level that might make people uncomfortable. This reaction comes from the pressure to be on time, the peer accountability that is associated with making and keeping commitments, and the transparency that is required to actively participate.
Meeting |
Purpose |
Duration |
Frequency |
|---|---|---|---|
Determine what work to do in the coming sprint. |
Two hours per week in the sprint, up to four hours |
Once per sprint |
|
Allow team members to commit, collaborate, and communicate risks. |
Fifteen minutes |
Daily |
|
Show the customer and other stakeholders the work that the team accomplished in the sprint, and receive feedback. |
Two hours per week in the sprint, up to four hours |
Once per sprint |
|
Identify and implement ideas for process improvement. |
Three hours |
Once per sprint |
See Also
Concepts
Planning and Tracking Projects