What are the different ceremonies in an agile team?

Agile ceremonies are just meetings with defined lengths, frequencies, and goals. Each ceremony is different, but they work together towards achieving the same overall purpose: to help project teams plan, track, and engage stakeholders with their work. Put most simply, Agile ceremonies are the meetings or events that take place during a Scrum Sprint.

Why are Agile ceremonies important?

Each Agile ceremony is there to help you adapt to change. When using Sprints, and planning and executing work in smaller portions over shorter timeframes, the ceremonies help you and your teams to shift direction when needed. 

Ceremonies are essential to successfully adopting and practicing Agile. They help to accelerate product development, increase productivity, and often help to improve the communication and alignment between development teams, IT, and the wider business. 

What are Agile ceremonies?

1.      Sprint planning

The Sprint planning ceremony establishes the desired outcome for the upcoming Sprint, which backlog items to work on, and how to achieve them. These take place at the beginning of each Sprint. 

The Product Owner talks with the business ahead of the Sprint planning meeting to get any relevant feedback. They are also responsible for updating the product backlog for the meeting. This Sprint backlog is a list of tasks or product features to be delivered during the Sprint. 

The product team then seeks to balance the needs of the business with the capacity of the team when agreeing on which backlog items to prioritize during the upcoming Sprint. Once agreed, each team member knows exactly what they’re working on during the Sprint. 

Typically, these planning meetings last up to eight hours per meeting. 

2.      Daily Stand-Up

The daily stand-up, or Scrum, is a daily meeting during which team members provide brief updates on what they’ve completed over the previous 24 hours. They also discuss what they plan to work on next and any actual or potential obstacles that are in the way. 

Many project teams include a Scrum Master, who will lead the meetings and make notes of any potential obstacles, as one of their key roles is to remove roadblocks. These meetings are called stand-ups to encourage people to stand and keep the meetings short. Around fifteen minutes is generally recommended as the optimum time for most stand-up meetings. 

3.      Sprint Review

The Sprint review meeting is when the project team showcases what they’ve achieved during the Sprint to key business stakeholders. The Product Owner facilitates the review and seeks feedback from the business on progress-to-date and what items need to be prioritized next.

These reviews typically last up to an hour per week of the Sprint – for example, a two-hour meeting for a two-week Sprint.

4.      Sprint Retrospective

A Sprint retrospective is an excellent tool for helping to ensure your teams get the most out of Agile software development. Because Agile stresses the importance of continuous improvement, having a regular retrospective is one of the most important Agile development practices.

A Sprint retrospective is a meeting held at the end of the Sprint. During this meeting, the team reflects on what happened during the Sprint and identifies actions for improvement by asking the following specific questions:

• What worked well for us? / What did we do well?
• What did not work well for us? / What could we do better?
• What actions could we take to improve our process going forward?

Reference:

https://teamhood.com/agile/agile-ceremonies/