AGILE MEETINGS

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Agile Meeting is a project management tool that allows members of a team or group to unite and function in oneness and at a scintillating pace. Just like how successful football teams across the world put all hands-on deck to win trophies, which requires agility, speed and brilliance, Agile Meetings also fall in such a category.

Meetings are acts we might not embrace, perhaps it’s because of the long hours we spend in one, or the fact that participants have to sit still in a particular position throughout its duration. But truth be told, an organization that intends to be successful can not do without holding conferences.

Regardless of the type or shape of project management a team subscribes to, meetings are inevitable. Though most meetings could be boring and filled with events that seldom lead to little or no results, Agile Meetings seem an application that can help erase these shortcomings.

Agile meetings are majorly focused and productive without digressive or foreign conversations. Every meeting held on Agile has a concise objective of what to be achieved, such as evaluating the previous sprint or making plans for the next. 

Though Agile commenced its operation as a proposal for improved software development, It has since been the software to reckon with, as many teams and organizations have subscribed to Agile. 

Agile has a governing set of standards and concept that are carefully listed in its policy statement 

There are twelve principles guiding Agile and are clearly stated in its manifesto. They are:

*Fulfilling the needs of clients through early and non-stop delivery of productive work.

*Smashing large tasks down into minor tasks that can be attained promptly.

*Acknowledging that the best work emerges from self-organized teams.

*Giving motivated people with the atmosphere and assistance they require and bank on them to get the job done.

*Establishing methods that facilitate bearable efforts.

*Conserving a steady rate for finished work.

*Embracing changing requirements, even late in a project.

*Compiling the project team and business owners on a daily basis throughout the project.

*Having the team reflect at regular intervals on how to become more productive, then tuning and modifying behaviors accordingly.

*Gauging growth by the proportion of finished work.

*Repeatedly pursuing excellence.

*Harnessing transition for a robust benefit.

While Agile isn’t a framework, there are quite a number of different substructures or frameworks that are under the Agile software.

They are Scrum, Kanban, Crystal, Dynamic system development method, Disciplined Agile, Lean software development and many more.

In this article, we are going to be placing our focus on the two most used frameworks under Agile, which are the SCRUM and KANBAN frameworks. Before we dwell on these, let’s dwell more on some characteristics of Agile meetings.

Have you ever thought of Agile Meetings working remotely? With no iota of doubt, Agile can work remotely, however, there are some limitations to using Agile remotely. These hurdles include, Difficulty in demonstrations, Alignment of a large group doesn’t occur naturally, Psychological safety can suffer, which is crucial for retrospectives and lastly, Conversations can quickly become unstructured and inefficient.

Overseeing remote Agile meetings requires flexibility and knowing what works best for your group or team. There may be a need for a breakout into mini groups for synergistic conversations, or you might need to add another type of meeting to the schedule, so the ‘Sprint’ planning sessions won’t turn into problem solving sessions.

Now, let’s delve into the two most used frameworks under Agile Meetings

Scrum

Scrum is a strong framework that regulates your project and delivers integrity iteratively at brief duration. Scrum is known to be the most outstanding procedure used for overseeing a software development project. Here, the obligation is interpreted in a way that the team is self-driven and target-oriented, which gives more possibilities for success.

The vital meetings available under Scrum are Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-up or Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, and Retrospective. Furthermore, teams may require backlog improvement sessions that need the product manager to make sure that there is excellence in user stories and emphasizes the features list.

1. Sprint Planning

This is an Agile procession carried out by three individuals, the Development team, Scrum Master, and Product Owner. It is held at the advent of a new sprint, its purpose is to set up a prioritized worklist and bring the entire team in alignment for success all through the sprint. Under Sprint planning, the Product Owner will communicate a prioritized backlog with the development team, and the whole group altogether rises to the amount of feat involved. Afterwards, the team decides how much of the work from the backlog can be obtained in this iteration. The sprint session range can be kept within 4-6 hours if the best sprint planning methods are observed.

The Product owner tells the user stories and all of the use cases to every member of the team before the meeting commences. Then the team afterwards, have the privilege to ask questions or clarifications about them, to get rid of any confusion.

Effort estimation commences instantly using the method of planning poker, then user stories are assigned to individual members of the team once effort estimation is settled.

Team members can still add a new user story or task if they find something within a sprint regardless of the meeting status of the meeting. If this happens, it’s advised that Team members should relay such information to the product owner, especially if recently found work does not appear to be part of the original plan.

2. Daily Scrum or Stand up

DS is an integral sync up meeting available both in Scrum and Kanban procedures. An agile ceremony carried out for the Development Team, enabled by the Scrum Master. The Product Owner and the stakeholders can partake in this meeting to resolve issues put forward by the development team. This meeting happens each day preferably at the same place and commonly held at dawn. The basis of the Stand-up is to keep every team member on the same page.

Under Daily Scrum, every team member is expected to answer 3 questions: What did I do yesterday? What will I do today? and Are there any obstacles to keep on working?  The daily stand-up should be deemed a casual meeting and should not exceed twenty minutes.

3. Sprint Review

Yet another Agile procession held by the Development Team, Scrum Master and Product Owner, the stakeholders may be persuaded to join as well. The motive of the Sprint Review is to exhibit the task that the team has accomplished in the latter sprint. The layout of the meetings can be informal or formal; this depends on the team’s intentions. Scrum Master requires to design this session nicely before it commences to make sure participation of stakeholders who can provide essential response on the sprint demo are put in place. After providing demos of work progress, the team can anticipate and earn feedback from the stakeholders. The Sprint Review session takes  about  60-120 minutes.

4. Sprint Retrospective

This procession is held after the Sprint Review meeting, and lasts up to sixty minutes. Partakers are Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development Team. The purpose of Sprint Retrospective is to find out what worked adequately and what didn’t, during the last iteration. The team attempts to find out any problem that is stalling the progress. Written feedback is submitted by participants. Then the team takes this session as an opportunity to do better. If there are different types of problems then the committee selects the three most elected cases and examines them to find their remedy jointly.

KANBAN

Kanban is designed to boost the efficiency of a whole organization.

From abrupt daily check-ins within a team to massive-picture technique surveys with senior administrators, Kanban meetings maintain interconnected Kanban networks regulating efficiently, helps recognize crisis areas, and examines all-around customer satisfaction.

Kanban meetings are divided into 7 parts, they are:

1. Daily Stand Up

According to its name, Daily Kanban Stand up occurs daily, and doesn’t take more than 15 minutes. A Standup meeting should be run rapidly and efficiently. Daily Stand up is  traditionally held standing, sit doesn’t give room for comfort. The Standup’s goal is to answer three questions: “What’s hindering us?”, “How is work flowing?”, and “What can we improve?”

2. Replenishment Meeting

Occurs weekly and lasts for half an hour. It helps keep a steady stream of tasks moving across Kanban board.

During the Replenishment meeting, participants should keep in mind important things such as forecasting delivery date items, the category of service of new work items, bigger strategic goals, and distinct team member skills to be obtained.

3. Risk Review meeting

Occurs monthly, and duration is about 60-120 minutes.

This procession assesses aspects that put work delivery in danger. During the risk meeting, blockers and backlogs should be evaluated to foresee prospective threats to delivery. It worth examining the reasons for preceding downfalls and settling their causes rapidly. This will shift from month to month, making this meeting with the most deviation in participants.

Others include Service Delivery Review Meeting, Delivery Planning, Operations Review and Strategy Review.

.CUES FOR SETTING UP AGILE MEETINGS

*Making use of tools at your disposal 

You don’t need to go all alone when it comes to Agile Meetings. There are streams of mechanisms and templates that can be of massive aid for your team and you. Using project management software or an affiliation tool will prepare you with a lot of useful data and elements, like the capacity to appoint, access to achievement of metrics, and the existence of a single reference of truth. Also, there are lots of templates, strategies that can help your Agile meetings. The Sailboat, ‘Mad sad glad’, The 4 L’s, ‘Start stop continue’ are a few familiar ones for Agile retrospectives.

*Staying focused on your set goal

The fact that Agile Meetings is highly focused, sets it apart from other meetings. So, for success, there’s a need to stay singularly zoned in on your meeting’s objective and reduce irrelevant discussions so there won’t be distractions. A daily standup should not turn into a sprint planning meeting.

*Embracing Collaboration

Prosperous Agile meetings bind on collaboration. There’s a need for a team to communicate and work hands in gloves for improvement and efficiency for a sumptuous output. This implies that there should not be a person leading every meeting in a very prescriptive direction.

It should be a norm for every member of the team to have a privilege to chime in and partake. Every member should be speaking up and sharing in your daily standup.