Demo & Retrospective

Demo

Even though it was a late night on Wednesday, we managed to get all our stories 'done' ready for the demo the next day. I was told by the scrum masters that the demo with the client went very well. The only disappointing thing is that apart from the Scrum masters and the BAs and other management types outside of the sprint teams.

I raised this during the last retrospective and an item was actioned for this. However, nothing came about of this. The scrum masters decided that the team members should go to the dry run prior to the sprint demo. I was one of those who went along, it was nice to see our work up there and as one of the client is a part of our sprint team, it was re-assuring to see him presenting and selling the end product so well.

The only issue is that the sprint teams should have the option of going to a client demo whether they choose to or not is up to them. Ultimately it is the sprint team who have produced the work and the client should have exposure to this, it feels a bit like they're being shielded from the sprint team. I know that management have their reasons and that 'rooms are too small' etc, even if the sprint team were there as observers it would be a good learning experience for the team too, especially those that have not been involved in agile development before.

Lastly, it is one of the practices of Agile, that team members should be present at demos! I mean after all, we only did the work!!!

Retrospective

So we had our 2 hour retrospective meeting (which went over the 2 hours) and a lot of discussion came about.
The approach that was taken was that prior to the meeting our team (on flipchart paper) wrote down the positive and negative elements of the sprint.

In the meeting we created an agenda which was:
1) What went well
2) Could do better
3) Like to start doing
4)Actions
5) AOB

We went through the flipchart list, discussed them and then came up with an action list.

What has happened in the past is that action has not been taken on the action list (see what I did there). That was another point that was raised, so let's hope this time round that something comes of the actions.