I am a big fan of the Agile development process. I am also a big fan of Scrum. This is the typical set of ceremonies that we use to organize:
Standup
| When | Duration | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Every day | 10’ | Zoom Channel or Team area |
This is the typical 10 minute meeting where we share our updates. The standup has been scheduled early in the morning so that we can kick-start the day with having a plan in mind or focus on solving any blockers awaiting from the previous day. As a person I suffer from regular memory outages (no, it’s not a real condition!!!) and because I want to avoid a situation where I state my colleagues without being able to recall what I was doing the day before, I have create a cli tool to keep track of the tasks I have completed. In general, each engineer answers the following questions * What did you accomplish yesteday? * What are you working on today * Did you face any blockers?
- After the standup every member of the team must be aware of the progress made and any blockers that affect the work of the team.
Pre-Grooming
| When | Duration | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Once every sprint | 30’ | Zoom channel or Team Lead’s desk |
This is a session including the very senior members of the technical team only. The product owner of the team participates as well. The aim of this meeting is to review stories and find the ones that are top priority.
Grooming
| When | Duration | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Once every sprint | 1 hour | Zoom channel or meeting room big enough to fit the whole team |
This session includes the whole team and the aim is to discuss new stories and estimate them. The estimation is done using poker cards (Using the Fibonacci sequence). If there isn’t an agreement in regards to how complicated is the implementation/testing of the story then we discuss it between us. If we still disagree, we chose the highest estimate given and we move on to the next story.
Review
| When | Duration | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Once every sprint | 1 hour | Zoom channel or meeting room big enough to fit the whole team |
The review is the chance of the team to showcase to interested parties outside of the team boundaries what we have been working on. This help us to bring people up to speed about the architecture/design of a particular feature and get feedback early on.
Retros
| When | Duration | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Once every sprint | 2 hours | Zoom channel or meeting room big enough to fit the whole team |
This is one of the most important sessions of our Scrum process. We spend 15-20 minutes writing all the good/bad things happened in the sprint and later we discuss them. In order to help team members working remotely we have been using Metro Retro lately with great success.