In a previous article I gave you an overview about the scrum review. Within this article I want to show you a short “how to” list which you may use during the meeting as a reminder of the important steps.

 
Preparation of the meeting

The scrum master has to prepare the meeting. He will prepare a list with all expected features and according acceptance criteria defined during planning meeting 1.

 
Presentation of the sprint results

At first the scrum master will give a short overview of the review content.

Then the development team will present the sprint results. The user and the product owner must be active included into this presentation. For example they should work with the software.

All questions, improvement suggestions and change requests can be discussed directly during the review meeting. The scrum master will make notes do the discussed points. After the review he will look at this point together with the product owner and they will add according new user stories to the product backlog.

 
Assessment of the sprint result

At the end of the review the scrum master will ask the user and product owner whether all features and acceptance criteria are fulfilled and whether the sprint result is accepted. If the review or parts of the review where not accepted then the product owner will define the next steps. For example the found issues may be added to the product backlog and solved within a next sprint or it is even possible that the whole sprint is not accepted and a second review after an according bug fixing time is necessary.

 
Follow-up by Scrum Master

After the review the scrum master will update the product backlog together with the product owner. They add user stories for all change requests.

 
Hints for the review

Do demos and no presentations. So you want to show the working product and no PowerPoint presentation.

Have participant and no audience. The user and product owner must have the possibility to use and test the sprint result. So don’t do a presentation but let them use the product.

Do a conversation and no question and answer session. Talk together with the user and product owner about the new features. And please don’t use the feature list with acceptance criteria as a check list. Instead speak about each feature and let the user and product owner give you a detailed feedback.

Use pen and paper instead of lists with open issues. In reviews you will often have conversations where new ideas will arise. So you get a lot of feedback and some new feature requests for the product. But do not create an issue list and add all these things. Instead the scrum master should make notes to all these ideas and discuss them later on with the product owner.