Sprint Reviews: Challenges I Faced as a Scrum Master

The Sprint Review is a formal Scrum event where the Scrum Team and stakeholders come together to review and evaluate the outcome of the Sprint. During this meeting, the team and stakeholders collaboratively decide on the next steps for the product.

Each Scrum Master has their own approach to conducting Sprint Review meetings, and over my 7+ years of experience as a Scrum Master, I’ve encountered various challenges. I’d like to share these challenges and strategies to overcome them, ensuring a successful session.

Scenario I – Stakeholders do not join the Sprint Review

One of the most common challenges a scrum team faces during sprint review is that stakeholders are very busy and often cancel their attendance at the last minute. Some techniques that help to encourage the stakeholder to attend the sprint review are as below:

1. Let us start by defining a team Working Agreement. A working agreement is used by Scrum teams that work as ground rules for the product, fitting both parties. Working Agreement contains many things such as team details, roles & responsibilities, the tools they use, how they deliver, etc. Among these things, a working agreement also contains team events with their timing, audience, cadence, etc. Having this agreement in place not only helps stakeholders to understand the importance of these events but also timing is coordinated to suit everyone involved.
2. We should discuss with the Scrum team the right amount of priority items to be showcased within the timebox.
3. The agenda items should be clearly incorporated in the Sprint Report. This report talks about the achievements of the current sprint, business impact, Sprint Velocity, and any team dependencies along with the next sprint items.
4. The main focus should be to highlight the business impact your sprint has made so as to encourage stakeholders for valid feedback. We actually should portray the impact through our production tickets that are about to for a release and what the business value they deliver. Example-In a FinTech company, we have developed a case where advisors can see the exchange rates and assets, that is in a way increasing the business value which previously customers were not able to view.
5. Keep the stakeholders updated regarding the action items that came from one of their feedbacks. We should actually be transparent with them showing the story points that the team burned during the sprint and how much spilled and actions to cope with that to help our stakeholders be wary of the roadmap planned.
6. The review should not be too technical, otherwise the stakeholder tends to lose interest.

Scenario 2 – Product Owner treats Sprint Review as acceptance and sees the work done for the first time

1. This is another challenge faced by most of us. Since the PO might be busy with various business-level initiatives. It is very important to get the right availability & attention from them.
2. As a scrum team, we should invite PO for our daily scrum meetings to discuss the requirements.
3. The best way is to ask the PO to give an overall picture of the business roadmaps and make developers understand the requirements and their priorities.
4. The PO should refine all the stories before coming to a refinement session.
5. In case he is unavailable, we should ask for another availability.
6. We also need to get Go-No approval from the PO in some cases.
7. The SM and PO should work closely to discuss the team challenges if any.
8. In a self-manageable scrum team, it becomes everyone’s responsibility to bridge the gap between the developers and PO.

Scenario 3 – Difficult to handle Sprint Reviews because of a lot of feedback

If everyone is actively involved and a lot of feedback is on the way, it might get difficult to manage it. Some things that may help are:

1. Invite just the relevant set of stakeholders. Too much crowd will be overwhelming.
2. Please encourage the stakeholders to be a part of ongoing refinement activity for the Product Backlog.
3. Prioritize the work on which you want feedback. Discuss the critical item achieved first.

Being a SM I have faced all such challenges, but it depends on the way we overcome those. The cure to all these challenges faced by us would be more communication, transparency, and valuable feedback. In fact, everyone is responsible for the success of Sprint Review and that means everyone needs to be aware of their position in the team and how their actions have an impact.