Agile meetings are used in Scrum to create regularity and minimize the need for undefined meetings. Optimally, all meetings are held at scheduled times and locations to reduce complexity. Agile meetings have gained relevance in different industries, adapting to different types of teams.
Each meeting, in agile, is a formal opportunity to inspect and adapt Scrum mechanisms. These events are specifically designed to allow the necessary transparency. If meetings are not conducted as prescribed, opportunities to inspect and adapt are lost (1).
Most Important Facts
- Agile meetings are conducted within a Scrum agile methodology framework, which employs an iterative and incremental approach to optimize processes and achieve results in the short term.
- The main objective of agile meetings is to provide a context that allows the team to stay focused on the objective, with a specific order and clarity in the assigned tasks.
- For companies, it is increasingly clear the importance of efficient and effective management of their projects, optimizing delivery times and ensuring adaptation to customer needs.
What you should know about agile meetings
Agile meetings occur within a Scrum methodology framework, which employs an iterative and incremental approach to optimize predictability and control risk. Scrum involves groups of people who collectively have all the skills and experience to do the work and share or acquire such skills as needed.
What are agile meetings?
Agile meetings are an event within an agile process where the team gets together to talk about what the next steps are. The main purpose of agile meetings is to improve communications within the team working with agile methodologies, including Scrum, to ensure that everyone is aligned (2).
What are the four agile meetings?
Within the context of agile, the meetings are called ceremonies, a differentiating way of naming a normal meeting held within an agile process. Before beginning each ceremony, team members should understand the purpose of the meetings and how they will affect the sprint (2).
Why are agile meetings important?
For a business to succeed in sustaining itself, it needs to go through a process of adapting to these changes instantaneously. In this scenario, the importance of efficient and effective management of your projects without wasting time is becoming increasingly clear, as changes tend to happen drastically and quickly.
It is in this environment that agile methodologies can integrate management, contributing with a direction on how to perform tasks and manage teams in less time and focusing on the activities that are the solution to the customer’s problem (3).
What differentiates agile meetings from traditional meetings?
Traditional methodologies impose a work discipline based on the documentation of the process, emphasizing the global and total planning of all the work to be done. Once it is detailed, the development cycle begins.
This is the opposite of agile methodologies, which often ignore documentation and focus on the work, seeking a balance between process/effort. The following table shows the relevant aspects between traditional development methodologies and agile methodologies (4).
| Traditional methodologies | Agile methodologies |
|---|---|
| Predictive | Adaptive |
| Process-oriented | People oriented |
| Rigid process | Flexible process |
| Conceived as a project | One project is subdivided into several smaller projects |
| Little communication with the customer | Constant communication with the client |
| Delivery at the end of development | Constant deliveries |
| Extensive documentation | Little documentation |
What are the roles of the participants in agile meetings?
Product owner
Represents the customer and the overall business for the product they are working on. They own the backlog, prioritize and make executive product decisions on a daily basis.
Scrum master or facilitator
Responsible for ensuring that the team has everything they need to be able to work. They are coaches, counselors, advocates, overcoming obstacles, facilitators and mediators all rolled into one.
Read more about Scrum Meetings here.
The team
Is a cross-functional group, all focused on delivering a working end product. Ideally, this group of 5-9 people is fully dedicated to a scrum team.
Each of these roles has unique participation in each of the agile meetings. Generally, the Product Owner and team are always present. However, the Scrum Master ‘s presence is sometimes dispensable, for example, in daily update meetings in which only the team and the Product Owner participate (5).
How long should agile meetings last?
The duration of agile meetings depends on the type of ceremony involved. Although the methodology foresees times for each type of meeting, in practice, times tend to vary according to the complexity of the product, the needs of the stakeholders and the particularities of the sprint (6).
How do teams function during agile meetings?
The planning meeting is divided into two parts. The first part of the meeting discusses what is to be done in the next Sprint, and the second part discusses the how. The first part is organized and led by the Product Owner, while the second part is led by the team.
The Scrum Master’ s only job is to make sure that the meeting exists as part of Scrum and that it stays within the estimated durations.
In review meetings it is the team that usually has the most important role, as it is the team members themselves who demonstrate the increment produced. It is good practice for everyone to participate on an alternating basis. In retrospective meetings, the Scum Master is usually the facilitator (7).
What are the benefits of conducting agile meetings?
The benefits of agile meetings are framed in the use of agile methodologies. Although they are numerous, they are mainly focused on cost reduction and delivery time reduction (7).
Process simplification
Agile methodologies deal with standards compliance in a shorter way, through iterations so as not to saturate the process with extensive documentation.
Quality improvements
Emphasis is placed on obtaining the necessary functionality and quality. They provide adaptability to change and deliver results that are more tailored to the customer’s needs.
Timely treatment of risks
Reduce risks of unfulfilled scope, attack risks at the outset and give them greater attention.
Improved productivity
During the process, comprehensive tests are performed that benefit quality assurance, avoiding waiting until the final testing stage, where problems or major changes usually arise.
Active customer participation
The client can see progress and give his opinion, which offers a more agile response to changes without the need to wait for subsequent stages.
What types of projects are agile meetings good for?
Although agile methodologies emerged for software development teams, today their adoption by different sectors within various types of industries continues to increase.
Agile meetings are used around the world to provide a framework for cross-functional teams to solve complex problems or carry out innovation projects.
Why should agile meetings be facilitated and scheduled?
Agile meetings represent times when a team allocates a specific amount of time to each task. They are meetings for preparation, consolidation, review and evaluation of results. They need to be scheduled so that all team members can coordinate their agendas and participate in each meeting.
Agile meetings are an essential part of the agile environment and should be facilitated by a Scrum Master with the goal of minimizing the frequency with which the team goes off on tangents or has conversations that are not related to the project. The effectiveness of agile meetings is tied to the team’s focus on the project.
5 Tips for Conducting Effective Agile Meetings
To achieve efficiency and effectiveness in every agile project, it requires a process of learning and maturation of the team. However, here are some tips that can help you conduct agile meetings effectively from day one.
1. Invite members of other teams to join
Cross-functional teams often bring a different view of the problem and also data that is not always at our fingertips. However, the meeting can lose focus if there are too many participants. Try to keep the focus on the team’s own goals and choose guests based on what they can contribute.
2. Be very strict with time
All participants should join on time and avoid lags. For an agile meeting to be effective, you must ensure that the time spent in the meeting is as productive as possible and that there is time to discuss everything on the agenda.
3. Come prepared
Study the agenda with the topics to be discussed at the meeting ahead of time so that when the meeting starts, you are ready to get to work. You should be aware of what will be shared with the team, and be ready to discuss the strategy and action plan.
Learn everything about Meeting Preparation here.
4. Make sure everyone feels heard
Establish an order so that all participants have the opportunity to raise their concerns, convey their ideas and make any valuable contributions they deem necessary. Everyone should listen carefully, without interrupting those who are presenting their ideas, and wait until they have finished to comment or ask questions about what was said.
5. Make it fun
Look for original ways to break the ice and boost the team’s energy. Meeting every day can be tedious, adding a little fun is a practice that will remove tensions from the team and predispose them to actively participate.
Conclusion
Digitization and digital transformation have propelled the emergence of new forms of organization within companies. Agile project management has brought about a real revolution in response to the great demand within organizations to offer the best service in record time.
Agile meetings make processes more dynamic and help to find innovative solutions in a very short time. Although agile methodologies emerged linked to software development, today they have been adopted by different types of industries and their popularity is growing day by day. Its benefits increase as teams mature and meetings become more productive.
References
1. Ken Schwaber & Jeff Sutherland, The Scrum Guide The Definitive Guide to Scrum: The Rules of the Game. November 2020.
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2. Alecsandro Rodrigues de Albuquerque, Prof. Me. Geysa Helena Guimarães Chaves, Prof. Me. Leila Cristina da Silva Oliveira, Prof. Me. Ivone Ascar Sauáia Guimarães, Rafaela Maranhão Leite. Importance of Agile Methodologies for the consolidation of efficiency in organizational processes: A case study in a service organization.
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3. Bryan Molina Montero, Harry Vite Cevallos, Jefferson Dávila Cuesta. Agile versus traditional methodologies in the software development process. June 2018.
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4. Yorlenny Hidalgo Morales, Jorge Trejos Gutiérrez, William Ernest Mondol, Jonathan Cordero Duarte. Agile Methodology for Project Management. University for International Cooperation.
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5. Scrum: roles and responsibilities. The 3 roles of the Scrum methodology.
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6. Sarah Laoyan, July 13, 2022. Get to know the 4 agile ceremonies in depth.
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7. Engineer, Luis Miguel Egas Robalino. Research work, prior to obtaining the Academic Degree of Magister in Management of Information Systems.
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