Scrum is founded on empirical process control, and inspection is one of the three pillars.
Each of the Scrum Artifacts is inspected in one or more Scrum Events to detect undesired variances. If you feel something isn’t running as expected, have a good look with your team at your Artifacts what could be going on.
Inspection is about detecting undesirable variances in progressing towards agreed goals.
Let’s take the Sprint Backlog.
The Sprint Backlog is inspected at least during the Daily Scrum to detect variances in the progress towards the Sprint goal. Where are we now? How does this relate to the Sprint goal we committed to? What about the committed improvement actions?
Typically it are the Developers of the Scrum Team who are performing this inspection.
The Sprint Backlog contains the items the team feels, and has identified so far, that need to be done in order to achieve the Sprint goal. If you take a good look at these, will these really achieve the Sprint Goal? What are the gaps? And what is not really needed...?
Summary:
Inspect your Sprint Backlog to detect variances in the progress to deliver the Sprint goal in a Done Increment.
Prompt:
With your entire team evaluate your Sprint Backlog.
- Do we understand the Sprint Goal?
- Where are we now with regards to the Sprint Goal?
- What might be missing to achieve the Sprint Goal?
- What might be too much in the Sprint Backlog that is not needed to reach the goal?
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 Master workshop. We have some scheduled in the coming period.
Don't want to miss any of these blog posts? Have the professional Scrum foundations series weekly in your mailbox.
