Daily Stand-ups

Daily stand-ups are a standard approach as part of the SCRM methodology. The collocated team meets at a dedicated fixed and short time slot (usually 15 minutes) and answers one by one the following questions:

• What did I do yesterday?
• What will I do today?
• What are obstacles on my way?

Based on experience we have the DO’s and DON’T DO’s:

DO’s

• Create and support an open environment and atmosphere
• Schedule follow ups for identified obstacles
• Be firm, be brief, be open

Don't DO’s

• Don’t use it for individual tracking
• Don’t expand the timeslot by going too much into the details (rather schedule follow up)
• Don’t blame.

Demo

The demo will be used to demonstrate deliverables to the team or to the customer. They can be regularly scheduled or on request. Best practice is to block a slot which can be used or dropped. In addition it is useful to ensure that whatever gets shared/presented with the team went at least through one quality cycle before (as in, at least one feedback loop with another team member took place). If there is nothing to showcase, the meeting will not take place. Showcased items can be any deliverables. If possible, share a link to them one day ahead of the meeting, so the team can have a look at them ahead of the meeting.

Retrospective & Review

As the iterations in GoR are quite short, best practice has been established to combine retrospective and review. They do not (!) include the demo and can be rather short if well prepared. They usually happen on last day of the sprint. During this session the following activities are to be performed:

• Review the result of the features planned for the current sprints based on the “definition of done”
• Accept or reject completion status
• Review the “definition of done”
• let the team assess what went well and what to be improved
• celebrate success

Planning

Planning session usually happens at the first day of each sprint. Activities include:

• Review the preparation of features in the backlog
• Plan features or user stories for the current sprint
• Adjust the approach if necessary