1. Confidential 10/7/2013 1
AGILE TOUR YEREVAN
05, October, 2013
STAYING PRODUCTIVE
WITH MEETINGS
Varduhi Vardanyan
Senior QA Engineer - PSM

2. 2
Agenda
 Meetings Common Problems
 Agile Measure of Success
 Effective Meeting Rules
 Daily Scrum ( Rules/Best practices)
 Sprint Planning Meeting( Rules/Best practices)
 Sprint Review( Rules/Best practices)
 Sprint Retrospective( Rules/Best practices/ Formats)
 Summary

3. Meetings Common Problems
3
How many times have you
found yourself in such a
situation?
How many of us
enjoy team
meetings?
Maybe we just
chilling hours without
any outcome?
How many of us leave
meetings feeling more
motivated and
enthusiastic?

4. Meetings Common Problems
Do we need to care?
4

5. Agile Measure of Success
5
Goal
Process Relationship

6.  Average hourly salary of team member
 Average number of members per team
 Typical meetings duration
 Meetings you attend each week
6
Cost of meetings
10$
5 people
1 hour
5/week
$50/hr $250/week $125.000/year

7. Effective Meeting Rules
7
Space
Punctuality
Being prepared
Agenda
Goal
Desired Outcome
Time-boxed
No handouts at the beginning
No phones and email reading
Listen to understand
Cut out Waffle
Breaks

8. Daily Scrum is…
8
… a 15 minutes time-boxed
event to synchronize activities
and create a plan for next 24 hour
…every morning meeting to
communicate problems and
promote team focus

9. Daily Scrum
Rules
9
• What has been accomplished since the last
meeting?
• What will be done before the next meeting?
• What obstacles are on the way?

10. Daily Scrum
Rules
10
Time-boxed
Location and time remains unchanged
Everyone stands
No discussions
No reporting
No absent members

11. 11
Daily Scrum
Best Practices
Better conducted in first half of the day
Encourage people to report what their
impediments are
There is no particular order of
people to be followed
No electronics of any kind
Pigs only
Keep to the point
Cut out Waffle
Rules on wall

12. Planning meeting is…
12
…time boxed to 8 hours and
consists of two segments that
are time boxed to 4 hour each
- first part is for selecting the
product backlog and the second
one is for preparing the sprint
backlog

13. Planning Meeting
Rules
13
Attendees
Prepared product backlog
Answering questions.
Task list

14. Planning Meeting
Best Practices
14
Come up with a clear goal
Begin a sprint planning session once your
product backlog is enough organized and
detailed.
Realize that you must commit to sprint backlog
Do not confuse your Sprint Backlog
with your Product Backlog
Make sure to indicate in your Sprint backlog
whether someone is currently working on the
item and the status of that item

15. Sprint Review is…
15
…time-boxed event to
demonstrate a potentially
shippable product increment
…two-to-four hour event for
the team to show the stakeholders
the work they have accomplished
over the sprint

16. Sprint Review
Rules
16
Be prepared
Focus on the acceptance
criteria
Scrum Master is a silent
observer
Never say “no” outright to a new feature or
enhancement request

17. Sprint Review
Best practices
17
Be honest
Treat all feedback as welcome feedback
Make it informal
Discuss sprint process/ share ideas

18. Sprint Retrospective is….
18
…a meeting in which the scrum
master, the product owner, and
the development team discuss
how the print went and how to
improve next sprint.

19. Sprint Retrospective
Rules
19
Focus on understanding, learning
and looking aheadRespect other
people’s perspectives
Open and Honest Communication
Executable Action
Items
Make a decision

20. Sprint Retrospective
Best practices
20
Define a goal
Vary with formats
Avoid blaming
Create Working Agreement
Learn from mistakes

21. Sprint Retrospective
Formats
21

22. Sprint Retrospective
Formats - Starfish
22

23. Sprint Retrospective
Formats – Emotional line
23

24. Sprint Retrospective
Formats – Giving flowers/starts
24

25. Summary
 Why we need to care about effectiveness of meetings
 Effective Meeting Rules
 Daily Scrum ( Rules/Best practices)
 Sprint Planning Meeting( Rules/Best practices)
 Sprint Review( Rules/Best practices)
 Sprint Retrospective( Rules/Best practices)
 Formats for effective retrospectives
25

26. 26

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