Sprint Review Bazaar

#1

Our company has grown to have about 15 teams working on the same software project. Stakeholders now potentially have seven sprint reviews to go to per week. In the LeSS framework, there is the idea of a diverge-converge meeting pattern. Is there more information on how to do this when the scrum teams are distributed?

We really like the idea of a Bazaar or Science Fair, but want to know if there are similar formats that can work when the teams cannot be physically in the same space (although luckily still in compatible timezones).

#2

Joris - so is the problem a constraint on the stakeholder side (having to attend multiple simultaneous events) or more of a “how do we keep all the teams aligned towards the common goal”?

#3

Although team alignment is also an issue, right now teams only get very limited feedback from stakeholders, because there are too many meetings to attend. I consider this to be the bigger problem at this time.

Our internal stakeholders are heavily constrained for time, so we need to make it as efficient as possible for them to optimize the system.

#4

We had a while ago a sprint review, which has been very detailed (what has been done), and another public review few days later, which encompassed a more strategic view (what has been achieved). The public review was combining sessions from multiple products. Would this be what you understand from a Bazaar or Science Fair?

#5

What my understanding is from a Bazaar or Science Fair is an event where the teams present their work in a large space. Every team gets their own place in this space and stakeholders walk through the space, ask questions where they want and provide feedback where they want.

In this setup stakeholders can quickly sample what has been done by looking at presented visuals and zoom in on topics they want to dive into.

An alternative that I can come up with is to have an online summary of all the work that has been done in the previous sprint by the various teams and then have multiple dedicated rooms with video conferencing setup. We don’t have enough video conference setup for 15 teams though. So I was wondering if there are other known formats out there.

#6

An additional layer of complexity to this problem is that sprint drops can be “sashimi” incremental slices to a goal and the customers at review struggle to see the larger release level picture. Put these together and…

One of our solutions is that the product owner will summarize every month or quarter all the great work across several sprint reviews into a YouTube video (10 min or less) that is posted into our company channel. This allows groups that won’t ever come to sprint reviews (marketing, legal, C-level) to get a more dense consumption channel that also raises excitement. And, because of where it is posted, our external beta customers etc, can see what is coming too. Also, these are posted into our internal company communication channels to all employees (so other teams get to see it too).

This might allow a little laziness for sprint review attendance… but the upside outweighs the down.

#7

One of the things I did in a previous life is we had a Showcase right before/after every release (3 week sprints, so about once a month). Each team got 10 mins to come up and show off what they did (9 teams total, so the meeting went around 90 mins)…they demo’d the software that they deployed to an assortment of stakeholders up and down the food chain as well as to the other teams. Attendance early on was spotty but as time went on we had more and more stakeholders show up and actively participate. It was especially helpful for the higher ups as they felt like they were “closer” to what’s being delivered.

I’m currently in a SAFe environment where we have a showcase at the end of every program increment (10 weeks) that has the same agenda and same results.

Being as your teams are remote that adds a particularly nasty wrinkle but the above may work.

#8

Video is amazingly powerful in corporate. I’ve spent 2+ years building an ERP system, an intern came in and turned it into a 7 min summary video, I think next week he’ll be my boss.