Squad Events

An Agile Team is a cross-functional group of typically ten or fewer individuals with all the skills necessary to define, build, test, and deliver value to their customer, and here are all the events required to be conducted/attended at Agile Team level.

Squad Events Description

These are reoccurring events that happen during each Iteration.

Quick Links

Iteration Zero Capacity Planning for PI PoD & Squad Structure Templates

Events	What	Partcipants	Frequency	Duration	Activities/Outcomes
Iter ation Planning	First activity in each Iteration for all scrum teams Teams select items from their backlog, review, estimate in more detail, and commit them to the current Iteration for execution	Facilitator- Team Coach Participant- Product owner, and sqaud members	Beginning of each iteration	1 hours	Review the available team capacity Product owner and BA reviews the refined and prioritized stories with the team Team members select high priority backlog items based on team capacity Team members ask questions about user stories, and offer solutions, to increase estimation accuracy and encourage ongoing collaborative problem solving Define and review the definition of “done” if needed Revise user story points estimate, if necessary Team members identify tasks for all the user stories such as coding tasks, testing tasks, documentation, etc…(can be done during refinement as well) Team members finalize Iteration backlog and start the Iteration Pro Tip: Avoid any changes to scope post Iteration start however it can be done on on case basis. Any change to the Iteration backlog should be discussed/agreed with the team and necessary trade off should be done. SM to facilitate the conversation. By default Dev lead capacity not part of Iteration capacity. Dev lead can pick up some stories (spike,analysis etc.) based on the need
Team Sync	Meeting with the Iteration Team to communicate what was done yesterday, what will be done today, and any impediments	Facilitator- Team Coach Participant- Product owner, and sqaud members	Every day	15 mins	Team members provide status on what they did yesterday and plan for the day Share impediments if any Pro Tip: Focus on impediments and facilitate follow up if needed
Backlog Refinement	Twice Weekly (minimum) review of the team backlog PO presents new or existing unrefined stories for review. Team works together to refine PO/BSA to ensure it meets Definition of Ready and can be planned in an upcoming Iteration	Facilitator- Team Coach Participant- Product owner, sqaud members & stakeholders (when relevant)	Weekly Twice	1 hours	The goal of Product Backlog refinement is to work with the Agile Team and stakeholders (when relevant), to get Product Backlog items in a ‘ready state’. Removing user stories that no longer appear relevant Creating new user stories in response to newly discovered needs Re-assessing the relative priority of stories Assigning estimates to stories which have yet to receive one Correcting estimates in light of newly discovered information Splitting user stories which are high priority but too coarse grained to fit in an upcoming iteration
Iteration Review		Facilitator- Team Coach Participant- Product owner, sqaud members & stakeholders	End of the iteration	1 hour	Scrum team demo the stories completed to stakeholders Review stories not finished Q&A Pro Tip: Ensure all required stakeholders are present in the meeting No demo from developer machine Document feedback and log in Jira
Iteration Retrospective	Occur at the end of Iteration after the Iteration Review for all scrum teams Team uncovers what worked well and what didn’t creates action steps for improvement to try next Iteration	Facilitator- Team Coach Participant- Sqaud members	End of the iteration	1 hour	What went well? What didn’t go well? What can be done to improve performance/remove obstacles? Identify changes to implement, improve and monitor in next Iteration (3 important ones) Scrum team health check Celebrate success Pro Tip: Make retros qualitative and ensure that improvements are logged in backlog
Design Review	Review the designs with PO Gather feedback	Facilitator- Product owner Participant- Team Coach, UI/UX designer, UI/UX lead and business stakeholder	Weekly	0.5 hour	Applicable for Squads with scope of delivering value which involves UI/UX updates Review the design with Product Owners to ensure the design aligns with the product vision, user needs, and technical constraints Make a list of prioritized feedback Identify potential issues & improvements Pro Tip: The designs created in the current iteration should be for N+1 iteration