What should be top of mind when a Scrum team prepare for a Sprint review?

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3 minute read

Unleashing the Power of Stakeholder Engagement in Sprint Reviews 💡🔍 

In the Agile landscape, effective stakeholder engagement during Sprint reviews can be a defining factor for success.  

Let’s explore how to transform these interactions into impactful opportunities. 

The Essential Element of Effective Sprint Reviews 🌟 

Stakeholder engagement is not just an add-on but a critical component of successful Sprint reviews. Understanding their needs and expectations is paramount for the Scrum team’s success. 

  • Grasping Stakeholder Priorities: 🤝 Remember, the primary question should be, “What do our stakeholders care about?” Focus on their interests and concerns. 

  • Beyond Tech Jargon: 📊 Technical details are important, but how they’re communicated to stakeholders makes all the difference. 

  • The Art of Engagement: 💬 Think of each update as a chance to market the team’s achievements in a way that highlights value to stakeholders. 

Crafting a Stakeholder-Centric Sprint Review 🎯 

Effective Sprint reviews are tailored to the audience - your stakeholders. This section focuses on aligning the review process with stakeholder interests and needs. 

  • Tailoring Communication: 🗣️ Adopt a communication style that resonates with stakeholders, focusing on the impact rather than just technical details. 

  • Showcasing Value: 🚀 Regularly highlight the benefits of your team’s work, making it relevant and exciting for the stakeholders. 

  • The Engagement Challenge: 👥 Overcoming the hurdle of getting stakeholders interested and involved is key to a successful review. 

The Formula for Maximising Stakeholder Engagement ✅ 

The right engagement strategy can transform your Sprint review into a productive and transparent collaboration. Let’s dive into the strategies that make this possible. 

  • Engagement Leads to Transparency: 👓 A successful Sprint review leads to an up-to-date, transparent product backlog, achievable through effective stakeholder engagement. 

  • Understanding Stakeholder Language: 💡 Speak in terms that stakeholders understand and appreciate to keep them engaged and informed. 

  • Innovative Engagement Tactics: 🌈 Use creative ways to demonstrate value and relevance to keep stakeholders engaged. 

How to Ensure Your Stakeholders Care 😌 

Ensuring stakeholders care about Sprint reviews requires a proactive approach. Here are some tactics to increase their interest and involvement. 

  • Regular Check-Ins: 📆 Building a strong relationship with stakeholders outside of Sprint reviews is crucial for ongoing engagement. 

  • Feedback Loops: 🔄 A feedback mechanism encourages stakeholder input, increasing their investment in the process. 

  • Educate and Inform: 🎓 Teaching stakeholders about the Agile process can elevate their understanding and appreciation of their involvement. 

Turning Challenges into Opportunities 🚧 

Every challenge in engaging stakeholders is an opportunity to innovate and improve. Let’s look at how to turn potential obstacles into advantages. 

  • The Issue of Low Attendance: 🛑 Investigating and addressing the reasons behind low stakeholder attendance can significantly improve engagement. 

  • Engaging Non-Technical Stakeholders: 🌍 Present information in a way that is accessible and relevant to all stakeholders, regardless of their technical background. 

  • From Passive to Active Participation: 👋 Encourage stakeholders to actively participate by involving them more in the process and decision-making. 

The Stakeholder-Focused Sprint Review 📈 

A stakeholder-focused approach can revolutionise Sprint reviews, making them more than just a technical update. It’s about creating a shared journey towards project success. 

Your Takeaway: Mastering the Art of Engagement 🎖️ 

The secret to a transformative Sprint review lies in how well you engage your stakeholders. By focusing on their interests and needs, you can foster a collaborative and effective Agile process.

One main thing that should be top of mind is what do my stakeholders care about. Right, so one of the big values of a Sprint review is engaging your stakeholders, getting information that you as a Scrum team—so that’s the Product Owner, the developers, and the Scrum Master—that we as a Scrum team don’t have.

How do we get that out of the stakeholders? And in order for those stakeholders to engage, they have to care. So your engagement with them during Sprint planning has a lot of marketing in it. You’re asking, “What have we done for you, the stakeholder, in the last two weeks or four weeks?” Right? What have we done for you? Here’s the cool stuff we’ve done for you.

No, here are the API changes that we’ve made or the database triggers we’ve updated, because the stakeholders are just going to basically fall asleep and probably not going to want to come next time. So that focusing quite heavily, that one big thing is the engagement between what the team is creating and producing and the stakeholders, and how do we maximise that collaborative experience.

And perhaps even maximise the number of people that turn up. I find that in a lot of Sprint plannings, teams struggle to get the stakeholders to actually turn up, let alone engage once they’re there. Right? But struggle to get them to turn up, and it’s because they don’t care.

So are we building the right features? Right? Are we communicating them in a way that those stakeholders need them to be communicated in order for them to understand what it is we’re doing and engage with what it is we’re doing? Because if you don’t have that engagement, the purpose of the Sprint review is to make sure that when we walk out of the Sprint review, we have the most transparent and up-to-date product backlog.

So when we start the next Sprint, we have the most transparent and up-to-date information to get started with, and you’re not going to get that if you don’t engage with your stakeholders.

So getting that engagement is absolutely key.

Thanks for watching the video! If you enjoyed it, please like, follow, and subscribe. I always reply to comments, and if you want to have a chat about this or anything else Agile, Scrum, or DevOps, then please book a coffee with me through Naked Agility.

Scrum Product Development Sprint Review Scrum Team People and Process Scrum Master Agile Product Management Team Performance Team Collaboration Transparency and Accountability Product Owner

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