While this workshop can be used on its own, it was designed to be used as part of the Sprint Review Recipe .
160 Minutes
The purpose of the Sprint Review is to maintain transparency of the Product Backlog and the focus of the Product Goal by integrating all of the changes that have happened in the product and the current business conditions since the last Sprint Review. Any insights insights, ideas, and changes that result from this inspection should be immediately reflected in the Product Backlog.
The Sprint Review is about answering the question: “Based on what we learned this Sprint, and what happened in the business, what are the next steps?”. This provides valuable input for Sprint Planning.
This workshop leverages Liberating Structures and consists of the following string:
Although Scrum Masters can certainly facilitate the Sprint Review, there is nothing holding others back from facilitating. Since the Sprint Review is particularly important for the Product Owner, as he or she will be sharing the increment with stakeholders, it makes sense for him or her to also play a role;
Create an instance of the Mural template above and add to it Product Vision, Product Goal, Working Agreements, Definition of Done, & the Sprint Goal.
Whenever you bring a group of people together, make sure to start by clarifying the purpose of your time together. While also making sure to announce this up front (in invitations and e-mails), start by reiterating the purpose of the Sprint Review (see above) as well as the purpose of this Sprint as captured in a Sprint Goal.
In order to maximize the opportunities for shared learning, we want to the Sprint Review to be a highly interactive and engaging event. That is why we’re going to start with Impromptu Networking. This is an excellent Liberating Structure to get the thinking started and clearly signal that interaction is both encouraged and necessary.
In three rounds, participants partner up with someone else and take 2-minute turns to respond to the following invitation:
“Based on the Sprint Goal, what questions, expectations, and considerations come to mind? What else?”
As the rounds progress, invite participants to note patterns, similarities, and differences. After the three rounds are completed, ask the group to briefly share the most important patterns they noticed.
The invitation for Impromptu Networking specifically ties the conversation to the Sprint Goal. If you find yourself in a Scrum Team without Sprint Goals, you can also ask ‘Based on the Sprint’. But keep in mind that working without Sprint Goals makes it very hard to work empirically and effectively as a Scrum Team.
Now that everyone has had the opportunity to get their thinking started about what they are looking for in the Sprint Review, we can start the inspection. Instead of a presentation or a demo by the Development Team, we instead use a Liberating Structure called Shift & Share.
There are 3 to 7 stations — depending on the number of participants. Each station focuses on a relevant area of the Increment to be inspected — like a related set of PBI’s — or other relevant topics — like release planning, market conditions or product vision. Stations are equipped with whatever devices are helpful to perform an inspection of the product on, like smartphones, tablets, laptops, and specialized hardware. Each station has a host who takes responsibility for starting the conversation, guiding inspection and gathering feedback. Other participants distribute evenly across the stations. Every 7 minutes, the groups rotate to the next station while the hosts remain with their station. Continue until all groups have visited all stations.
The 7-minute timeboxes are based on our experience. You can increase the time-box if you have fewer stations or when the group agrees that this allows for better inspection, but we recommend against changing the timeboxes in between. A variation you can experiment with is to allow participants to pick a selection of the stations they’d like to visit in a limited number of rounds.
Shift & Share is a good approach to shift from statically presenting a “Done”-increment to a more hands-on approach where stakeholders actually explore working software. We usually invite stakeholders to write feedback on special ‘feedback cards’ that are available at each station — but this is just one idea on how to gather feedback.
After inspecting the increment and other relevant topics during the Shift & Share , now is a good time to make sense of the insights that emerged from this. Instead of a group conversation, we’re structuring this interaction with a Liberating Structure that is tailored for debriefing a shared experience; What, So What, Now What .
In small groups, ranging between 4 and 6, participants reflect on what they learned from the Shift & Share and what this means for the Product Backlog and the next Sprint. This is done during three consecutive rounds of sense-making, each starting with a moment of individual reflection followed by a brief 5-minute conversation in the small groups. The invitations for each round are:
Round 1: “What have you seen, heard or observed during the Shift & Share? What facts or patterns stood out the most?” Round 2: “So, what does this mean to our work together in this and future Sprints?” Round 3: “Now, what adaptations to the Product Backlog or our release plan make sense? What needs to be added, removed or re-ordered?”;
The invitations for What, So What, Now What are structured so that they focus first on gathering the facts (round 1), then trying to make sense of what they mean (round 2) and finally deciding on the next steps (round 3). This allows our decision to be more based on actual experience and data, and less on personal opinions and judgments. After three rounds, invite the small groups to share their most important findings with the whole group. The Product Owner can adjust the Product Backlog transparently based on insights or capture objectives for the next Sprint. If you have the time, you can do an intermediate debrief with the whole group in between rounds. We do recommend keeping these short to prevent it from turning into a group conversation that goes on-and-on.
If big topics emerge, you can use 1–2–4-ALL to dig deeper. Or schedule a time during the coming Sprints to work on them if they are not urgent enough to impact the Sprint Review.
Now that we have identified important objectives for the next Sprint, as well as made necessary adjustments to the Product Backlog, it is time to close with what each participant can contribute individually to their work together. For this, we use a Liberating Structure called 15% Solutions .
Individually, people take a couple of minutes to write down their action steps according to the following invitation:
“What is your 15% Solution to help advance our work together on this product? What is something you can do without needing approval from someone else or resources you don’t have access to?”
When everyone is done, give participants the opportunity to briefly share and refine their personal 15% Solutions in small groups of 2–4 participants. We have often found that, by actively engaging everyone with Liberating Structures like this, people are better able to formulate how they can contribute. Stakeholders may offer to invite other stakeholders, join a refinement workshop with developers or be available for feedback. Optionally, you can collect the 15% Solutions and make them transparent somewhere — for example, next to a Scrum Board.
Close the Sprint Review by reiterating the purpose as well as the highlights that emerged. This is also an excellent opportunity to thank everyone who participated in the inspection and encourage them to join again for the next Sprint Review.
If you've made it this far, it's worth connecting with our principal consultant and coach, Martin Hinshelwood, for a 30-minute 'ask me anything' call.
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