When Should You Review the Team's Work?
A member from Kansas City, Kansas recently asked when is the best time to review the team’s work—just-in-time or during the sprint review?
Her team currently has a product owner review system where all items must be shown to the product owner before they can be tested by the quality assurance team. She thinks the process feels heavy-handed, but isn’t sure if waiting until the sprint review is a good idea either.
She turned to the Agile Mentors Community to hear from various members on their processes, what’s working, and what isn’t.
Reviewing Work Just-in-Time
A member from New Zealand responded in favor of the just-in-time review. He said he saw this modification to basic Scrum as a way to get timely feedback from the product owner that can be acted on immediately if more work is required. “We did this in my last Scrum team and it worked well.” he added.
He went on to caution that there is one caveat when using the just-in-time approach, and that is that there should still be an end of sprint review for all done items so the whole team knows what’s in the potentially shippable increment.
Without a sprint review for all team members, the team risks losing synchronization, which is really the purpose of all Scrum ceremonies.
The moderator added that it’s never a good idea to wait until the sprint review to show the product owner the team’s work for the first time. This may catch the product owner off guard in front of customers and stakeholders. A good time to do just-in-time reviews of work is after the daily scrum when the team is already together.
Choose the Most Important Stories to Review Early
A team member from Wisconsin added that they give the product owner an option to select product backlog items that he wants to review before the sprint review. He adds a task to the story called “PO review” to let the team know to show him the work early. This limits the process to high-value stories and it feels less rigid than a strict sign-off of every work item.
Review Work Informally with Frequent Desk Checks
A member from Texas shared that her team does “desk checks” with the product owner throughout the sprint immediately following quality assurance testing. Only the product owner can move stories to done in the workflow tool. She added that her team is fortunate enough to have a readily available product owner, so desk checks can happen informally several times a day. The team also does a sprint review at the end of the sprint for the entire team.
Avoid Arguing in Front of the Kids
A Maryland-based member added that it’s always a good idea for the product owner to review work before sprint review. “If we don’t do the above [show work early], we may put ourselves in a situation where we are ‘arguing in front of the kids’. In other words, we don’t want to have the PO see the stories demoed at the same time as the stakeholders.”
To join the conversation and to hear more comments from team members around the topic of reviewing the team’s work, join the Agile Mentors Community. Visit www.agilementors.com for more information on membership.