Pigs/Chickens/Scrum: The terms of good practice

Daily Scrum

Each day during the sprint, a project status meeting occurs. This is called a "scrum", or "the daily standup". The scrum has specific guidelines:

The meeting starts precisely on time. Often there are team-decided punishments for tardiness (e.g. money, push-ups, hanging a rubber chicken around your neck)

• All are welcome, but only "pigs" may speak
• The meeting is timeboxed at 15-20 minutes depending on the team's size
• All attendees should stand (it helps to keep meeting short)
• The meeting should happen at the same location and same time every day

During the meeting, each team member answers three questions:

• What have you done since yesterday?
• What are you planning to do by today?
• Do you have any problems preventing you from accomplishing your goal? (It is the role of the ScrumMaster to remember these impediments.)

Sprint Planning Meeting

At the beginning of the sprint cycle (every 15–30 days), a "Sprint Planning Meeting" is held.

• Select what work is to be done
• Prepare the Sprint Backlog that details the time it will take to do that work, with the entire team
• Identify and communicate how much of the work is likely to be done during the current sprint
• 8 hour limit

Sprint Review Meeting
At the end of a sprint cycle, two meetings are held: the "Sprint Review Meeting" and the "Sprint Retrospective"

• Review the work that was completed and not completed
• Present the completed work to the stakeholders (a.k.a. "the demo")
• Incomplete work cannot be demonstrated
• 4 hour time limit

Sprint Retrospective

• All team members reflect on the past sprint.
• Make continuous process improvement.
• Two main questions are asked in the sprint retrospective: What went well during the sprint? What could be improved in the next sprint?
• 3 hour time limit