Scrum is founded on empirical process control, and inspection is one of the three pillars.
During each of the Scrum Events, and throughout the Sprint itself, the Scrum Team and the stakeholders inspect based on a common understanding. Without this transparency, one cannot perform a valuable inspection.
Inspection is about detecting undesirable variances in progressing towards agreed goals.
Let’s take the Daily Scrum.
Inspect what?
Inspect the progress towards the Sprint Goal.
- Where are we now? Is this what we expected?
- What is delaying, or maybe even blocking our progress?
- With our current understanding, will we be able to achieve the Sprint Goal?
We often see Kanban boards being used for this. Which is fine. Know that there might be other, more suitable ways, depending your context.
If you do use a Kanban board, we advise
- to start your conversation beginning at the LEFT: what is needed to finish these items? And gradually move to the other columns.
- And use blocker-indicators showing immediately which items do need attention of the team.
PS. Kanban is a very useful, only in a lot of situations we only see the board being used. There is way more to it. You can read more about it in the Kanban Guide.
Inspection by whom?
- By the Developers. These are the people who develop. They need to understand their progress and determine if action will be needed to achieve their goals.
Summary:
During the Daily Scrum, the Developers inspect their progress towards the Sprint Goal to detect undesired variances in their progress.
Prompt:
With your entire team, have a conversation about
- the Sprint Goal,
- where you expected to be,
- where you are now, and
- what the variance is between these latter two.
I hope you find value in these short posts and if you are looking for more clarifications, feel free to take contact.
If you want to take a deeper dive into the core concepts we are covering in this blog series, then surely check out our Professional Scrum MasterY workshop. We have some scheduled in the coming period.
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