The sprint review is a vital part of agile project management’s inspect and adapt cycle. Together with the sprint retrospective they form the core feedback loop between the sprints. The sprint review meeting has two goals: for the team to demonstrate what they have completed and to gather feedback for the product.
During the sprint review, the development team, scrum master, product owner and the stakeholders come together and discuss their achievements. It’s a good idea to also involve some end users of your product. Everybody with an interest in the project is allowed to attend. The product owner often starts off the meeting by recapping the sprint goal and identifying what has been done. Remember that only user stories that meet the definition of done and have been accepted by the product owner can be considered as done. The development team then takes over and gives everybody a run-through of the completed product increment. A short Q&A session follows, where stakeholders can ask questions. Be sure to write down all the feedback you get. Some teams end the sprint review by letting the product owner quickly go through the product backlog as it stands and a discussion where the project is headed.
The meeting should not be longer than one hour per week of sprint duration. It’s an informal meeting, which means you should keep your preparation time to a minimum. There is a generally accepted scrum practice that prevents the demos from being scripted or rigged, and no slides are allowed.
With all the feedback from stakeholders and possibly even the end user, the results of a sprint review are usually an updated product backlog.
For more information on the different kinds of Agile Project Activities go to our previous blog post.
