The goal of the Kanban method is to help teams organize their workflow and eliminate bottlenecks. To do this, teams decide on a strict work-in-progress limit. The WIP limit defines the number of tasks that can be in any given column on the Kanban board. This helps reduce multi tasking, keeping team members focused and efficient.
What are the five key Agile Scrum meetings?
If you're using Scrum, the course of each sprint, your team should hold five types of Agile Scrum meetings. But don’t worry, most only occur once per sprint. In the following section, we’ve explained the basics of each meeting: When should it occur? Who should attend? And what does the meeting accomplish? Armed with this info, you’ll be ready to run smooth and effective sprints in no time!
Sprint planning meeting
Before your team begins a Scrum sprint, you need to know where you’re going. This is where the sprint planning meeting comes in. A sprint planning meeting should be one of the longest Scrum meetings you hold—plan on two hours of planning for each week of your sprint. (A two-week sprint, for example, requires roughly a four-hour planning meeting.) While this may seem like a lot, remember that you only need to hold one sprint planning meeting per sprint—right at the start.
The purpose of a sprint planning meeting is simple: Establish what you and your Scrum team want to accomplish this sprint and evaluate the bandwidth you have available. From there, you can plan the sprint, assign tasks, and set deadlines. Make sure each team member understands the ins and outs of the tasks they are assigned. You’ll want to invite the product owner to this meeting so they can clear up any ambiguities and help establish expectations.
To host an effective sprint planning meeting, check out our guide to sprint planning.
Daily standup meeting
As the most frequently held Agile Scrum meetings, daily standup meetings are the bread and butter of Scrum sprints. They’re short, to the point, and, as the name suggests, held each day—they’re typically the first meeting of the work day. By the end of a standup meeting, each team member should have answered two questions: What did I accomplish yesterday? And what am I going to accomplish today? Standup meetings are also a time for team members to bring up any roadblocks they are facing.
Though daily standup meetings only take between fifteen and thirty minutes, they are an effective way to keep each team member up-to-speed, on task, and openly communicating with others. Because they are held so frequently, standup meetings also allow teams to address problems as they arise, keeping the sprint moving on schedule.
Here's a quick course to help you set up and implement a daily stand-up for your team!
Sprint review meeting
Sprint review meetings are held at the end of each sprint. This meeting is an opportunity for you and your team to demonstrate what you’ve accomplished to the product owner and other stakeholders outside of your team.
Your goal in a sprint review meeting is to gather feedback. As you demonstrate new product features and functionality, allow the product owner and other stakeholders to respond to and evaluate your work. Agile methodology relies on open and frequent conversations: As you and your team document, respond to, and act on feedback, remember that these conversations help create a better product.
Certain feedback points may require additional work on the product—add them to your backlog and consider including them in the next sprint. This is a matter of priority: While you should implement the feedback eventually, if other tasks are more pressing you can save it for a sprint down the road.
Host a successful sprint review in Lucidspark with this quick course.
Sprint retrospective meeting
Just like review meetings, a sprint retrospective meeting is held at the end of each sprint. Whereas review meetings include the product owner and other stakeholders, retrospective meetings are primarily for the benefit of your Scrum team—there’s usually no need to get outside players involved.
