APPLYING CADENCE IN SCRUM: PART 2 OF 3

By Aaron G. Tucker, M.Ed, SPC

When it comes to SAFe and Agile ceremonies, most of them come from SCRUM. There have been great resources created to help you understand the intent behind the ceremonies, and others to help you understand some of the structural best practices, but I often find scrum masters and teams need encouragement to apply cadence to their ceremonies, as they may not see or understand the benefits.

Too often, teams are continuously changing and updating the ceremonies, days, time, longevity, and agenda. While Agile encourages us to be flexible, I am not sure there is much benefit in the randomness of a poorly executed schedule. So, I challenge Scrum Masters to look at why we would want to apply cadence to these ceremonies, some of the challenges this will help them overcome, and the best practices in preparing for and planning them.

This is part two of three of a deeper dive into those best practices to help you understand why I encourage such a cadence.

 Part 2 of 3

Daily Stand Up (DSU):  

Mornings daily for 15 minutes.

While it should not matter what time of day you have your DSU, and many teams leave the timing to agreement, the time of day can impact outcomes. Having it first thing in the morning prepares everybody for the day to come while also providing them the opportunity to finalize any previous day’s effort. Psychologically, when we set a plan for the day and organize our time around it, we are more likely to accomplish the goals within that plan. Can these outcomes occur when a DSU happens mid-day or at days end? Of course, but they are more consistent when we begin our day focusing on the plan and work to come.

Backlog Refinement:

Mid-sprint, off cadence from all other ceremonies; 1-2 times per sprint, as needed; early morning or later afternoon.

Consider scheduling refinement to be in the middle of your sprint week; if you run Mon-Fri then Wednesdays are best, whereas with a Wed-Tues iteration a Thursday may be best. This is one of the most flexible ceremonies as it may be added or removed as needed. It is more difficult to maintain cadence, however, setting it up and simply removing events as needed may be your best path. Since its more flexible, teams should put this where it will be least impacting to the team’s work and other ceremonial scheduling. Typically, this means putting it in the morning or late afternoon and not mid-day. Additionally, it should be noted, that you will want to have this at least once per iteration with enough time left in the sprint to ensure an additional instance can be added if necessary.

Sprint Review:

Afternoon of the last day of the sprint.

This one seems obvious. Since we are reviewing the progress made within the sprint, our goals, and products developed, we should do that as close to the end of the sprint as possible. In most cases, the afternoon of the final day is the best time to do this. In doing so, we effectively have allotted the team the entirety of their capacity to accomplish the sought-after goals.

Sprint Retrospective:

Afternoon of the last day of the sprint, immediately following the sprint review.

Another obvious one, the retrospective is there to discuss the positive and negative outcomes of the sprint. The best time to do this is immediately after we have reviewed those outcomes with our stakeholders. Doing so guarantees their feedback is fresh in our minds while also maximizing our time as we will find little need to have the same conversations as a refresher. We can jump right into understanding the challenges we faced, the efficiencies we created, and look at ways to improve upon our efforts in the coming weeks.

Sprint Planning:

Last day of sprint, following the sprint retrospective to plan in improvements.

This one could go a couple ways. In some shops, particularly those with localized talent, sprint planning could be completed the morning of the first day of an iteration with no less efficiency. However, due to the global nature of technology these days, and with highly distributed teams being in sometimes distant time zones, moving the sprint planning to the final day of the iteration, immediately following our review and retrospective provides additional benefit.

With distributed teams, having the planning on the first day of a sprint may cause some team members to begin work before the plan has been finalized (as priorities may have changed). This could result in descoped work being completed or dependent work being pushed out. Moving planning back one workday, to the final day of the previous sprint, ensures that those on one side of the world will have a plan in place BEFORE anyone starts the plan. This should help resolve some potential challenges and better prepare the teams to always be working on the highest priority deliverables.

Read Part 1 of 3 of this series “Cadence-Based Best Practices” here. 

Read Part 3 of 3 of this series “Cadence-Based Ceremonies Checklist & Example” here.