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 Sprint Retrospective.
Inspect what?
The Sprint itself in its entirety.
- Any specific goals for individuals showing deviations?
- Any interactions that did not work out as expected?
- Any process variations outside expected boundaries?
- What about the Definition of Done? Did the team achieve it? What work remains undone?
- How about the agreed improvements from the last Sprint Retrospective; were these implemented with the expected results?
Sure a team can use a qualitative feeling of how these items performed. If data is available though, make use of it. This again shows the importance of goal and target setting. If no clear targets are agreed, how can a team do a useful Sprint Retrospective?
Inspection by whom?
- By the entire Scrum Team: the Product Owner, the Developers, and the Scrum Master. They collaborated during the Sprint, now it is up to them to inspect themselves how effective they were.
Summary:
During the Sprint Retrospective, does your Scrum Team look for undesired variances with regards to individuals, interactions, processes, tools, and the Definition of Done?
Prompt:
With your entire team, have a conversation about
- the entire Sprint with regards to effectiveness of individuals, interactions, processes, tools and the Definition of Done
- where you expected to be with each of these topics,
- 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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