Is sprint review meeting formal meeting

The Sprint Review is formal in the sense that it is part of doing Scrum. It is an essential part of inspecting the increment and deciding what to do next.
It is informal in the sense that it is not about slick presentations and showing abstractions of what could have been done. It is about showing working product on whatever machine it runs in whatever state the software is in.

Hope this helps.
Cesario | PST

+1 to Cesario's answer. The wording in the Scrum Guide is slightly unfortunate.

Scrum meetings are best kept informal. It's the opportunities to improve that are formally encouraged.

Scrum meetings are best kept informal. It's the opportunities to improve that are formally encouraged.

+1 to what Ian said, and I'll add that is very important that the objectives for each Scrum event/meeting be met. The Scrum Guide describes the expected outcomes from each of the events. If you are not reaching those outcomes, then there may be a "leak" in your Scrum implementation that can have bad consequences.

For instance, at one company, they were doing everything Scrummy, except one thing. They failed to invite their stakeholders and customers to their Sprint Reviews. When those stakeholders were finally shown the product after several sprints, the stakeholders cancelled the project immediately. They had a leak, and the leak proved fatal in that case.

That's right, Sprint reviews are more about demoing actual working software rather than a power point presentation though you need a good presenter to keep involved all attendees in the demo. Also teams should be more vocal during the sprint review as there are chances that a team may want to demo a tool which is more of technical people and other teams for future use e.g. automation.

There are chances that the actual users of your product may not be available for sprint review but you should try to get as much feedback as you can from your product managers, sales team etc..

I think these statements are contradicting and must be removed from scrum guide. 

Thanks :) 

Hey guys!



In the 2020 version of Scrum Guide, there is no mention about it anymore.

The word "informal" does not appear in any place of the document.

Now the question is: could we keep considering the Sprint Review as an informal meeting?

Thx!

Yes, because there is no prescription against conducting it as an informal meeting. Rather, each event in Scrum is a formal opportunity to inspect and adapt something. There may be informal  opportunities to inspect and adapt as well.

Thanks a lot Ian!



I'm about to take the PSPO I Assessment and this question was large discussed in class yesterday.

Can we say that Sprint Review is a formal event since it's a required part of the Scrum Framework, but it's informal in the conduction?

Hi Guys,

I am currently preparing a SCRUM master contest, and this question of "formal" or not is still relevant in the Quizs even for the 2020 version of the SCRUM guide... Would there be a Frenchman in the area who could explain to me clearly how to interpret this "formal" please?

Thanks ;)

I find in a Continuous Integration/Build pipeline and auto deployment, new increment slices are being created throughout the sprint, that are being analysed by stakeholders, PO's, QA's. I find that the actual sprint  review is then quite informal and less than 30mins, because stakeholders have already evaluated the software. The actual review is then more about  determining what is done and what still needs work and then organising the backlog items accordingly. 

I think some descriptions of the  sprint review stems from days where a full piece of work was kept offline and  was "released" to stakeholders only at the end of a sprint. 

Is the question about the Events being formal in execution or if they are formal events, meaning they have recognized form and structure? I think of the use of formal in the guide to mean the latter; providing form and structure.