Development
Vision = reality
Ceremonies
To navigate iterations, ceremonies are used to provide relevant check-ins. Each ceremony serves its own purpose. The following set of ceremonies are recommended to occur every iteration.
Daily Huddle
A daily meeting that involves the squad lead, developers and if required, the product owner. Teams can choose to navigate these meetings in many ways, but the core discussions points should always be “What did I do yesterday?”, “What am I doing today?” and “What is blocking me?”. Tackling these questions during the meeting should bring up discussions on progress, stimulate discussion around impediments and finding resolutions.
Planning Session
An event that begins an iteration, its purpose is to clearly define the workload, an iteration goal and confirm how that will be achieved. The squad lead typically delivers a first take on the iteration backlog, which is finalised with the help of the developers and product owner. Before completing the planning session, everyone in the room should be able to agree upon the work, the estimated timeframe, how it will be developed and the acceptance criteria for each item.
Review Session
The goal of an iteration review is to demonstrate the delivered iteration of work. It is time for the delivery team to showcase their work, take relevant questions and discuss feedback. Unlike other ceremonies, this is the ideal time for external stakeholders that aren’t the Product Owner to become involved and provide input.
Elaboration Session
A meeting with the core purpose of investigating the future of the project and ensuring the backlog is properly elaborated upon for development. It is recommended to hold one of these meetings per iteration to allow an appropriate amount of time to look at issues potentially blocking the next iteration, or beyond. Tasks to look at during each of these sessions are adding or splitting stories, removing irrelevant stories, re-assessing the defined priorities and ensuring high-priority stories and tasks are ready for development.
Retrospective Session
A session dedicated to the reflection on an iteration. Not to be confused with the review session, the idea behind a retrospective is to have a chance for the delivery team to evaluate itself without the product owner and build an action plan for future changes. These sessions promote continuous improvement and emphasise small, incremental change for the better of the team and product.