Scrum Question

Muhammed,

Question #1: what if sprint goal is achieved before sprint estimated time?

First, congratulations.   Next, what do you think would be the best use of the remaining sprint time?   Can the team complete additional backlog stories that meet Definition of Ready?   Can the team spend time learning (knowledge transfer / cross-training)?   Is story refinement needed?

Question #2: Sprint Length: is usually 1 week to 4 weeks.  Are these working days?

I would suggest looking to the 7th Agile principle to guide you on your questions around this.   "Agile processes promote sustainable development.  The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely."

What work schedule would support the 7th principle?

Regarding holidays and time off, that could affect overall team capacity, and the team should consider that during Sprint Planning.

Question #3: In sprint review until now no demo of completed work has been given to PO, how PO knows what is completed and what is not?   No communication is made between development team and PO yet in Review meeting.

Why do you believe that the development team and the Product Owner do not communicate or collaborate at all during the sprint?   Look to the 4th Agile principle: "Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project."

There is nothing in the Scrum Guide that states the Development Team needs to wait until the Sprint Review to "demo" work completed.   The shorter the feedback loop, the better!

Question #4: can there be multiple scrum masters in this scenario for each team, or its restricted to 1 scrum master with multiple teams?

You can have one scrum master for multiple teams, but it is recommended to have one scrum master per team.   You would never have multiple scrum masters for a single team.

Question #5: will sprints of these multiple teams be independent. means each team have its own planning, daily-standup, retro and review on its unique calender?

Yes, all of the Scrum ceremonies will be independent and pertain to each team; however, scaling strategies such as SAFe, LeSS, and Nexus, may propose a combined meeting approach across teams around planning, sprint review, and retro as needed.

Hi Timothy,

Many Thanks! for guiding. I think for Question #1: what if sprint goal is achieved before sprint estimated time? you are right, The scrum team should end sprint on its planned time, and scrum team should discuss how they can make remaining time productive specially for achieving Agile goals like as you suggested backlog refinement, or helping PO for maximizing product value etc

Question #2: Sprint Length: is usually 1 week to 4 weeks.  Are these working days? I agree team should consider time off while planning sprints. So one week sprint means that 7 days sprint, including 5 working and 2 off days(weekend).

This arises two more things Q 2-a)Sprint length can be variable? like first sprint can be of 1 week and second 3 weeks?

Q 2-b)As scrum says sprint length can be between 1 week to 4 weeks. it means one sprint can be of lets say 9 days, another can be of 17 days?

Again Thanks for your Time.

Muhammed,

It may benefit you to learn more about Lean processing and the causes of waste.   Also, the "heartbeat" of Scrum is critical in reducing waste and setting/managing expectations.

Take a look at this article from Mike Cohn on the subject, and see if that doesn't help you understand this more clearly:

https://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/articles/a-regular-heartbeat

Am I correct that having a standard duration for Sprints helps with predictability? The concept of Empiricism states, I believe, knowledge comes from experience and making decision based on what is known. Standard Sprint duration helps with that. Am I correct?

That is correct. If teams observe a regular cadence, then over the sweep of their experience they will be better able to compare like with like.

Question: if multiple teams are working on single product backlog, there will be one PO and one product backlog:

Can there be multiple scrum masters in this scenario for each team, or its restricted to 1 scrum master with multiple teams? will sprints of these multiple teams be independent. means each team have its own planning, daily-standup, retro and review on its unique calender?

# Yes there is very much possible having different independent team running their own planning, stand up and review and retro meeting, however in case they are working for same release\portfolio then indeed there would be some touch point across team for different activities like code integration, system testing then team is expected to collaborate among them to deliver a single product to customer as we are working single product backlog. Hope it answers to your queries.