Does life ever feel like a hack rather than on purpose?
You want your life to have meaning and impact. Daily life is made up of the spaces we gather and the moments we interact with one another.
What if your spaces, moments, and interactions not only felt natural and intuitive but also aligned with your priorities and positively impacted those around you?
Discover your Everyday Design so you can focus on what’s important.
Scrum has a rhythm among its various events. If you’re starting or considering Scrum, you might be asking:
Who attends each of these meetings, and what role do they play?
These Scrum meetings are critical to the success of the Scrum team. So is understanding the role each team member plays. I’ll walk you through how the Scrum team members engage at each Scrum meeting.
Key ideas
- Identify who attends each Scrum meeting.
- Understand the role Scrum team members play in the Scrum meetings.
Identify who attends each Scrum meeting.
Before we cover each team member's roles in the meetings, let’s walk through who needs to be at each meeting. You’ll see a few new people who show up as guests at some of the meetings, and I’ll break down who needs to be there and for whom it’s optional.
Sprint Planning
- Development Team: Required
- Scrum Master: Required
- Product Owner: Required
Daily Scrum
- Development Team: Required
- Scrum Master: Recommended
- Product Owner: Recommended
Backlog Refinement
- Development Team: Required
- Scrum Master: Recommended
- Product Owner: Required
- Subject Matter Experts: Invited as needed
Sprint Review
- Development Team: Required
- Scrum Master: Optional
- Product Owner: Required
- Stakeholders: Required
Retrospective
- Development Team: Required
- Scrum Master: Required
- Product Owner: Required
Understand the role Scrum team members play in the Scrum meetings.
Now that we understand who is at each of these meetings let’s look at their role. We’ll walk through each meeting again, primarily looking at the roles of the Product Owner, Scrum Master and Dev Team. I’ll also include Subject Matter Experts and Stakeholders as they show up in some of the meetings.
Sprint Planning
Development Team: The dev team identifies how much work they can deliver at the end of the sprint. They ask questions and possibly further decomposed features using user stories and acceptance criteria. At the end of the meeting, the development team explains back to the product owner and the scrum master their initial plan for accomplishing the sprint goal.
Scrum Master: The Scrum Master facilitates the meeting, ensuring that questions are answered, and the team gets the clarity they need to begin the sprint.
Product Owner: The product owner defines the sprint goal or objective to provide clarity and priority for the sprint. They then work with the team to move requirements from the product backlog to the sprint backlog, answering questions along the way.
Scale Your Impact
What if it took the same amount of work to engage and serve 100 people as it would for 10? Let’s map out your workflows and processes and then adapt them in order to impact others at scale.
Daily Scrum
Development Team: Every day for fifteen minutes, the development team inspects the previous day's work, plans the next day’s work and identifies any barriers.
Scrum Master: The scrum master attends and helps the team learn to run the daily scrum, but the meeting is the team’s responsibility, and they are accountable.
Product Owner: Answer any questions or make quick product decisions that come up.
Backlog Refinement
Development Team: Reviews all the stories in the backlog for completeness, asking questions when they need clarity. If a story is too big, they work with the product owner to break it down. The team agrees to the acceptance criteria.
Product Owner: Presents the current backlog explaining and answering questions as needed by the team. If new requirements or stories arise during the meeting, the product owner will decide how to prioritize them in the backlog.
Scrum Master: Observes and helps the team work through the process effectively while keeping the meeting within the time-box.
Subject Matter Experts: Ask and answer questions.
Sprint Review
Development Team: The Dev Team presents and demonstrates the completed stories. The team also shares what went well during the sprint and what obstacles they encountered. They receive feedback from stakeholders and answer questions as needed.
Scrum Master: Attends to hear feedback from stakeholders and ensures the meeting goes as planned.
Product Owner: Invites the stakeholders to the meeting and facilitates the discussion. They review the state of the backlog.
Stakeholders: Ask questions and give feedback.
Retrospective
Development Team: The entire Scrum team inspects the last sprint regarding people, relationships, processes, and tools. You want to consider how to improve what went well and mitigate what was difficult. Take these insights and create a plan to improve how the scrum team is working.
Product Owner: Contributes to evaluating how the whole team worked together during the sprint. Suppose any changes the team decides on require additional work (like learning a new skill or fixing a broken process). In that case, the product owner should add an internal user story to the backlog to represent that work in a future sprint.
Scrum Master: Facilitates the meeting while also contributing to evaluating how things went and what might need to be changed.
Learning more about Scrum Meetings
I hope this article helped you clarify who attends each scrum meeting and their role. If you want to dive deeper into the topic of Scrum meetings or just learn more about Scrum, check out my What is Scrum? A Guide for Everyday People to Learn Scrum. If you have more questions, please feel free to reach out on LinkedIn.
Still not sure about your next step with Scrum? I offer a couple of free coaching sessions each month. You can signup for a free 1-hour coaching session, and we can work together to identify a good next step for you.
Does life ever feel like a hack rather than on purpose?
You want your life to have meaning and impact. Daily life is made up of the spaces we gather and the moments we interact with one another.
What if your spaces, moments, and interactions not only felt natural and intuitive but also aligned with your priorities and positively impacted those around you?
Discover your Everyday Design so you can focus on what’s important.
This post is part of an upcoming guide called Everyday Scrum? A Guide for Everyday People to Learn Scrum where I will explore and explain the key elements of Scrum.
Perhaps you have heard about Scrum but are not exactly sure what it is. Or maybe you know some about it but are not sure how to apply it, especially outside a software development context.
You find my my current and future guides on everyday.design. Signup to be the first to know when new guides are released.
There are a lot of new terms when learning the Scrum essentials, and this post probably introduced you to some of the vocabulary.
If you want to learn more about specific Scrum topics, here are a few to choose from or check out the scrum FAQs.
Applying Scrum
- How do I keep my team focused on the right work?
- What to do when projects change?
- Getting work done as a team
- How to change direction after investing effort?
Agile in Everyday Life
- Can I use Scrum for non-software development projects?
- Scrum for marketing
- Scrum for creative design
- Scrum in content creation
- Scrum in personal development
- Scrum in education
- Scrum in everyday home projects
Scrum Roles
- What is a Scrum Product Owner?
- What does a Product Owner do each day?
- Getting Certified as a Product Owner
- What is a Scrum Master?
- What does a Scrum Master do each day?
- Getting Certified as a Scrum Master
- Can The Scrum Master And Product Owner Be The Same Person
- How Is A Scrum Master Different Than A Project Manager?
Scrum Meetings
- How to do a standup/check-in?
- How to do sprint planning in Scrum?
- How does backlog refinement work in Scrum?
- What is a sprint review in Scrum?
- How to conduct a retrospective in Scrum?
Scrum General Topics
- Why Use Scrum?
- What Is The Definition Of Scrum?
- What Are The Pros & Cons Of Scrum?
- Scrum: Expectations Vs. Reality
- Is Scrum Hard To Learn?
- How To Align The Scrum Values With Your Organizational Culture
- What's the difference between iterative and incremental development?
- What Is The Definition Of Done In Scrum?
Scrum Advanced Topics
- Learn To Forecast Progress In Scrum
- What If I Don't Have All The Roles In Scrum?
- Scaling Using SAFe
- Cost Estimation
To learn more about Scrum, check out my What is Scrum? A Guide for Everyday People to Learn Scrum. If you have more questions, please feel free to reach out on LinkedIn.
FAQs
Scrum events overview
What are the Scrum events?
Sprint planning, daily standup, backlog refinement, sprint review, sprint retrospective.
The rhythm of scrum consists of various events.
- Sprint planning
- Daily standup
- Backlog refinement
- Sprint review
- Sprint retrospective
- The sprint
The last on the list is sometimes debated as to whether or not it’s actually a scrum event. I include it because it's critical to creating a cadence of work for the team.
Learn more about the rhythm of scrum. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
What scrum events are timeboxed?
Every Scrum event is timeboxed.
Most scrum events are timeboxed relative to the length of the sprint:
- Sprint planning: 2 hours / sprint week.
- Daily standup: 15 minutes.
- Backlog refinement: 2 hours / sprint week.
- Sprint review: 1 hour / sprint week.
- Retrospective: 45 minutes / sprint week.
Just because an event has a timebox doesn’t mean it needs to be that long. The timebox is the maximum time allowed for the event.
Learn more about the different scrum events. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
When should scrum events be held?
The Scrum team has freedom to adapt when some of the Scrum events are held.
Scrum events are generally held in the following order
- Sprint planning: Held at the very beginning of a sprint.
- Daily standup: Every day at the same time and place.
- Backlog refinement: Flexible. Held at whatever time and frequency best serves the team.
- Sprint review: Held on the last day of the sprint.
- Retrospective: Very last event of the sprint.
The backlog refinement session is unique in that it can be held anytime.
Explore further the events of scrum. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Which scrum event is most important?
Trick question...
I included this because it is frequently asked, but the question misunderstands the importance of the scrum events. It’s like asking which of your limbs is most important. You may be able to answer, but they are really all critical.
If pressed for an answer, the daily scrum probably has the greatest impact on the team's effectiveness.
Learn more about the events in scrum. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Scrum events purpose
What is the goal of each Scrum event?
Each event has a clear purpose.
- Sprint planning: Clarify the direction and goal for the sprint.
- Daily standup: Everyone on the team gains updated visibility into everyone’s work.
- Backlog refinement: Understand upcoming work.
- Sprint review: Present finished work to stakeholders for feedback.
- Sprint retrospective: Review how the team works and make necessary adjustments.
Understand the purpose of the scrum meetings. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Which scrum events facilitate inspection and adaptation?
Every event includes inspection and adaptation.
Inspection and adaptation (along with transparency) are pillars of scrum, so all events involve them.
- Sprint planning: the purpose and work of the sprint are inspected.
- Daily standup: progress toward the sprint goal is inspected, and adjustments are made.
- Backlog refinement: upcoming work is inspected, and PBIs are adapted.
- Sprint review: delivered work is inspected, and upcoming work is adapted
- Retrospective: team health and interactions are inspected, and norms or plans are adapted.
Learn more about the role of events in scrum. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Which scrum event is for process improvement?
Each Scrum event plays a role in process improvement.
Process improvement aligns closely with the scrum pillars of transparency, inspection and adaptation.
- Sprint planning: How do we improve the product?
- Daily standup: How do we improve our approach to the sprint goal?
- Backlog refinement: How do we improve the quality of the product backlog?
- Sprint review: How do we improve the functionality being delivered?
- Retrospective: How do we improve how our team works together?
Out of all the events, the retrospective is the most focused on process improvement.
Learn more about events in scrum. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
What is the goal of the scrum of scrum event?
Coordinating between multiple Scrum teams focused on the same product.
The scrum of scrums is an extra scrum event used when multiple scrum teams are collaborating together on a single product. The session allows the teams to update each other on what has been done, what obstacles have been encountered, and what to do next. The scrum of scrums follows a similar pattern to the daily scrum session.
To learn more explore the most common terms in a Scrum glossary.
Facilitating scrum events
How to facilitate scrum events?
Facilitation is customized to the event and the needs of the team.
Scrum events have a clear purpose and agenda but are still very interactive. Facilitation of scrum events is at its best when everyone is engaged, asking or responding to questions. All events are timeboxed, so the facilitator must ensure the team is always moving toward the goal.
Learn more about team member's responsibilities during scrum events. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
How to improve scrum events?
Scrum events improve as participation increases.
Three strategies for increasing participation in scrum meetings are
- Clearly state the goal. Sometimes people don’t engage because they are unsure about the purpose.
- Use facilitation games. There are many facilitation exercises available for the scrum events.
- Invite feedback. Inspection is a pillar of scrum. Ask the team for feedback on what went well and how to improve.
Learn more about everyone’s roles and responsibilities during the scrum events. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Who facilitates (or owns) scrum events?
Different members of the Scrum team facilitate the various Scrum events.
Scrum cultivates shared ownership for all the events, but each still has a facilitator.
- Sprint planning: Scrum master.
- Daily standup: Development team.
- Backlog refinement: Product owner.
- Sprint review: Product owner.
- Retrospective: Scrum master.
Learn more about everyone’s roles and responsibilities during the scrum events. Then explore the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Does the scrum master facilitate all the scrum events?
The Scrum Master primarily facilitates sprint planning and the retro.
The scrum master primarily facilitates two scrum events:
- Sprint planning
- The retrospective
The scrum master can help facilitate other meetings while a new team is beginning to learn scrum.
Learn more about roles during scrum events. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Beginning a sprint
What is sprint planning in scrum?
Sprint planning is the first event of the sprint and provides clarity for the team to reach the sprint goal.
Here’s a quick agenda
- Product owner sets the sprint direction.
- PBIs move from the product backlog to the sprint backlog.
- Team plans how they will complete the selected work.
- Team communicates their plan back to the product owner and scrum master.
Learn more about how to facilitate sprint planning. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
What is a sprint in scrum?
A sprint is the basic unit of time in scrum, serving as a boundary for what the team focuses on.
Think of scrum as a relay race, with each sprint being a lap. The scrum team hands off the “baton” of finished work to itself in the next sprint.
Learn more about the role of a sprint in scrum. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Is the sprint a scrum event?
The sprint contains all the Scrum events.
The sprint isn’t always included in the list of scrum events. I include it because it's critical to creating a cadence of work for the team. The sprint serves as a container for all other scrum events.
Learn more about sprints in scrum. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
At which scrum event is the sprint backlog created?
Sprint planning.
The sprint backlog is created during sprint planning as PBIs (product backlog items) are moved from the product backlog to the sprint backlog.
Learn more about the sprint planning process and then explore the most common terms in a Scrum glossary.
Middle of a sprint
What is a daily standup?
15-minute daily meeting to set the team's focus.
The Daily standup is a brief 15-minute daily check-in for the Scrum team to do three things:
- Inspects the previous day's work.
- Plans the current day’s work.
- Identifies any barriers to getting things done.
It’s called a standup because it’s so short you don’t need to sit down.
Learn how to keep your team in sync with a daily standup. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
What is scrum backlog refinement?
Previewing and defining future work.
During the backlog refinement session, the team previews upcoming work to ensure the following:
- Outcomes are clearly defined.
- Supporting information is visible.
- Resources are accessible.
There is flexibility for when to hold the backlog refinement session.
Learn more about how to run a backlog refinement session. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
Ending a sprint
What is a sprint review in scrum?
The sprint review occurs at the end of the sprint to inspect the delivered work.
Various stakeholders and subject matter experts from across the organization attend to give feedback.
Learn how to run a sprint review. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
How to run a scrum retrospective?
The retrospective occurs at the end of the sprint for the scrum team to focus on self-improvement.
The tone is positive and productive, focused on improving the team.
Three strategies for a compelling retrospective include
- Provide pre-work for the scrum team to reflect on the sprint experience.
- Set ground rules for healthy, productive communication.
- Use activities to facilitate the conversation.
Learn how you can facilitate a scrum retrospective. Then browse the most common terms in a Scrum glossary and learn what is Scrum.
