How to effectively take your Sprint Review events online
The global pandemic sweeping across the globe is having a big impact on the way we live our lives and has also had a profound impact on how we work. The lockdown measurements that went into effect in countries around the world have forced most workers and companies alike to take their work increasingly online. For coaches and Scrum masters that previously had their teams on-site it means shifting their thinking and coming up with novel ways to stay in touch with their teams in a personal and effective way.
But what does this mean for our Sprint review events, like the Bazaar review I spoke about in my previous article? These used to be centred around the idea that we need a large part of the company physically present, to look at and interact with our new features and products and provide feedback while talking to the teams in a casual way. Seeing as reality has changed, we need to adapt our setup to perform equally well online. In today’s article I’ll teach you how you can take your (Bazaar) Sprint review online effectively.
The foundation
Before we start our Sprint review we need to decide on a few important basics: how long is the event going to last and how do we draw a crowd? Let’s dive in.
Humans have a limited attention span, we can only focus for so long. As we’re taking this session online everyone will look at their computer screen, that thing they probably have been staring at all day already. As we want to keep the energy during this session high and have people enjoy themselves so they come back for the next edition of the event, I recommend capping the time to around 1,5 hours and have short breaks in between demos. 1,5 Hours is enough to give about 3 teams a demo of 15–20 minutes, which should be enough to show the most visually enticing features of their products.
While everyone is working from their homes and primarily interacts with their own teams, some groups might be in their own ‘information bubble’. We need some way to bring the event to their attention. In the 2 weeks leading up to the event, promote through all available online channels: Slack groups, Outlook invites, e-mail and also actively encourage other Scrummasters to highlight the event in their standups. For the first messages: keep a part under wraps to create a buzz: highlight that there is an exciting event with more details to follow soon and send out the calendar invites.
While everyone is working from their homes and primarily interacts with their own teams, some groups might be in their own ‘information bubble’.
When dropping messages, make sure it’s not just a block of text but create a digital poster with the most important pieces of information (who, what, where). The morning of the day of the event, send a reminder so people can organise their schedule around it.
Giving digital feedback
At the normal Bazaar review event we usually ask the audience to give feedback on our products through sticky notes, so let’s find a digital equivalent. There are several tools for digital feedback you can use and one of my favourites for this use case is a free tool called reetro.io. Normally this tool allows us to run digital Retro’s using different columns and digital sticky notes but we can re-use it for our purpose. Give each of the teams that demo a separate column and put the board on ‘public’. You can send the public link to the audience and ask them to use their own name and to sign in as a guest.
There are several tools for digital feedback you can use and one of my favourites for this use case is a free tool called reetro.io.
Also, create a QR code to put on the feedback-break slide so the audience can also scan this and input feedback through their phone. Everyone will be able to add digital stickies with questions and feedback in each of the columns as we progress through the demos. The team and Product Owners can respond to questions during the session or in the stickies and after the session the feedback can be exported and e-mailed for further processing into the backlog for instance.
Highlighting the products and features in an engaging way
Just like during a in-person Bazaar review event we encourage the teams to select visual and appealing features to show to the audience and for this digital session that is no different. During our first digital event we had a team that took this one step further: they did a role-play with the different teammates calling in of how the customer would interact with their app by sharing their screen and using a clickable prototype. Next to some laughs (there were some funny impersonations with costumes) this also brought the idea alive while there was no line of code written yet!
During our session we encouraged the audience to add their questions to the aforementioned Reetro.io-board while the demos were ongoing and directly after the demo the Product Owner of the team would pick a few of the audience questions and answer them directly. As we had over a 100 people calling in, doing a Q&A where people would unmute themselves could become very messy and chaotic with multiple people talking at the same time.
Entertainment — how to make it fun
Everyone is sitting at home and misses the days where they could let their hair down and have a little party. To make the session more fun and exciting we had one of our colleagues who likes to DJ in his spare time play music during the 5 minutes after the Q&A. This also gives the audience a bit more time for their feedback and breaks up the demos.
To add some more fun: award prizes for the best feedback given at the end of the event. Let the teams pick their favourite or most helpful stickies and host a little award ceremony at the end of the event. This stimulates quality feedback and also keeps the audience engaged until the end. The prize-winners will be eagerly waiting for their gift in the mailbox.
The wrap up
At the end of the event, assure everyone that their feedback is actually used on the product backlog and be sure to drop a hint about the next edition of the Bazaar event!
It would be great to hear your personal thoughts, experiences and ideas around this subject so please drop them in the comment section.
The tools of the trade
Microsoft / Google Forms
Zoom, WebEx, Skype
