Development Phase

Owned by Jenny Nguyen
Last updated: Jul 03, 2020 by Ryan Nakashima
3 min read

1. Sprint Planning

At the beginning of each sprint, the team will meet to set a sprint goal. After selecting a goal, the product owner presents the items that need to be completed for the upcoming sprint. These items are moved from the product backlog to the sprint backlog to be completed.

2. Daily Scrum Meetings

During the sprint, these short, mandatory meetings are typically at the beginning of each work day, run by the scrum master. These meetings are to set the goals for the day as well as for team members to update their scrum master on their progress from the previous work day.

Scrum Master Tips:

  1. While making updates to tasks, update the effort needed on each task as updates come in so it is easier to gauge how much work is left in the sprint.

  2. Keep the meetings short by guiding more complex questions that come up during the meeting to continue after the meeting.

Developer Tip: The daily scrum meeting is your frequent opportunity to update your team on your progress, indicate what you are working on next, and bring up any potential problems, but you can also provide these updates as needed at other times. Be honest about your progress so that your team can make changes if needed.

Product Owner Tip: Daily Scrum meetings create opportunities to evaluate progress and start thinking about if mid-sprint changes need to be made. Plan on being available to answer questions after the sprint.

3. Sprint Review

The sprint review is at the end of each sprint. The team shows off what it has accomplished during the sprint.

In larger companies, the sprint review is a chance for teams to see what other components of an application teams have worked on to understand the bigger picture, for stakeholders to be reassured work is being done and to get excited about the developed product’s progress, and for team members to feel like their work has been recognized.

In this program, the sprint reviews are also opportunities for teams to see what other teams have done and ask questions.

In this program, the product owner and project manager will create the presentation for each sprint review. The presentation should be up to 10 minutes long, with additional time set aside for questions. Visuals always help with presentations. Live demonstrations are the most compelling presentations, but also the most risky.

Tip for product owners and project managers: as much as possible, make sure to recognize each team member’s accomplishments. If live demonstrations are elected to be performed, be sure to practice them often before the presentation.

4. Sprint Retrospective

At the end of each sprint, the project manager of each team will lead the team in reflecting on three topics constructively:

  1. What went well; process, task completion success, communication, etc.

  2. What could use improvement; process, task completion challenges, communication, etc.

  3. How to improve the next sprint.

Ideally, the team will improve with each sprint. In this program, please consider everyone is learning the process. The goal is to grow over the course of the program to have a greater chance of success working after college. Help each other out and be good to each other!

Tip: If team members are not comfortable sharing in the group setting, project managers may collect feedback from individuals and anonymously share with the team. It may be worth having each team think for at least an hour before starting a live retrospective session.

5. Sprint Cleaning

After each sprint, the project manager and product owner should:

  1. Move all completed sprint tasks into the product completed task list.

  2. Evaluate uncompleted sprint tasks to determine if they should be carried over to the next sprint or returned to the product backlog.

  3. Implement any lessons learned from the sprint retrospective.