Sprint Review is a waste of time, huh?

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to Sprint Reviews is getting the right people into the meeting AND getting them to actively participate.

Many teams don't even have stakeholders invited because there is that weird sense of fear of stakeholders. What if they are unhappy with how things are going?

Or in the case of a team I worked with, stakeholders felt that they were wasting their time in the Sprint Review, because they weren't getting any value out of it. And it is also often the reason why stakeholders stop attending, or never come to your meeting in the first place. So why is that?

Well, often it is because the Sprint Review is not actually targeted at stakeholders at all. Like in the example of a team I worked with, they would show plenty of data about team internal metrics, like velocity, and discuss technical problems.

Don't get me wrong, this information is important, but not for stakeholders. What they want is to understand how far the team has come so far and how far they are from achieving their long-term goals. They want to see real progress from the customer's point of view, not developers'.

Here's how you can switch from not very useful Sprint Review to a highly useful one:

• Instead of sprint burndown and velocity chart, show the roadmap and the release or epic burnups.
• Instead of a list of items you had in your Sprint Backlog taken as is from Jira or ADO, show what part of the roadmap the items completed contribute to.

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You are not asking the questions right!

One of the key elements of the Sprint Review is conversation. It's a real opportunity to discuss with stakeholders what they think about the product and collect valuable feedback that can help you make better decisions going forward.

Most of the time this discussion goes something like this:

• Developers demonstrate something to the audience.
• The team asks: "Are there any questions?"
• Silence.

This doesn't seem like a very engaging discussion. Of course, stakeholders have a role to play and need to be proactive. But if you are just starting out with the Sprint Review or trying to make them better, then you need to provide better ways to communicate.

The easiest example is running a poll. Here below is a poll I created in Zoom. It' really easy to do and then easy to pull up in every meeting from a template. Run something like this at the end of the demonstration part of the presentation, for example.

This poll here is something I came up with as an experiment I want to run with this team I'm working with as I feel the energy in the Sprint Review is a bit low. And I also want to make sure that stakeholders use this opportunity to express their concerns if they have any.

Because what really is usually happening? The team presents something, asks for feedback. No one says anything. And then the team hears that they are not doing what stakeholders want, or they are not going fast enough... Ok, it's not an everyday occurrence, but it happens.

The point is to make it clear: the Sprint Review is THE place to ask questions and raise concerns. Kind of like "speak now or forever hold your peace". I know it's a bit extreme, but this is just to make my point clearer.

So another thing that is essential for a good Sprint Review are well-set expectations. For example something like this:

Even add something more specific than that with expectations for each role, like:

• Stakeholders and users have the opportunity to provide feedback and share concerns about what is being demonstrated and what we plan to work on next.
• Developers demonstrate working product developed in the past Sprint and answer any questions.
• Product Owner clarifies the current state of the Product Backlog and the team's progress towards Product Goal / release objectives / roadmap milestones.

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So I think I'm gonna leave you here. Hopefully, these ideas can help you create a better Sprint Review for your team and really engage stakeholders in discussion.

As I mentioned previously, I made the Sprint Review Presentation and Sprint Report available in the store as a standalone product.

Let's connect!

Thank you for reading. I hope you learned something new! Cheers,

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