Scrum Schedule
The authority on this topic are the inventors and the authors of Scrum and the Scrum Guide (Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland).
These are the (immutable) Scrum events as defined in the Scrum Guide:
- The sprint
- Sprint Planning
- Daily Scrum
- Sprint Review
- Sprint Retrospective
- Product Backlog Refinement (technically not defined as an event)
So here is a 2 week schedule based on the Scrum Guide:
NOTES
- The Daily Scrum isn't needed on the first day of the sprint and it's also not needed on the last day of the sprint, but should be a 15 minute stand-up for the days in-between.
- By convention in the daily scrum each person should not talk for more than 2 minutes. The narrative should be "what I achieved yesterday", "what I plan to do today", and finish by a quick mention of any blocker's, otherwise finish by saying "no blockers" to indicate you have considered if there are any impediments blocking your user stories.
- The Scrum events are part of the sprint and they are immutable.
- Typically the first day of the sprint begins with sprint planning, at the end of which, if a tool is being used, the "start sprint" button is pressed to lock in the selected user stories that make up the sprint backlog.
- Not every day in a 10 day (2 week) sprint is a full development day. In fact the last day typically has no development work as this time slot is dedicated to the Sprint Review followed by the Sprint Retrospective.
- Backlog Refinement should constitute no more than 10% of the sprint time (which is a maximum of 1 day in a 10 day sprint). These are shown as 2 x 4 hour time slots above. You may not need all of this time depending on the maturity of the product backlog, so its okay to finish a session early.
- You can of course vary this schedule as desired, for example, the sprint does not have to start on a Wednesday, or you could decide to have 4 x 2 hour backlog refinement sessions, or even just a 1 hour backlog refinement session over the whole sprint as determined by the needs and state of the product backlog.
- Remember that the non development work (shown as meetings) are Scrum events that are immutable. So yes, these meetings are a crucial part of the sprint and the Scrum methodology. Failure to do them means you are not practicing Scrum (i.e. you can no longer call it Scrum).
- Remember that there are only 3 roles in Scrum, the Product Owner, the Scrum Master and the Developer (and that Developer does not mean coder in Scrum and that it can include coders, testers, analysts, network technicians etc., whom are all assigned the role of "developer").
- You need to find a Product Owner. Typically the product owner is a key stakeholder from the business that understands the business processes and business rules and their priorities within the scope of the project.
- You do not need a project manager or a technical lead developer in Scrum, there are only 3 roles in Scrum (the Product Owner, the Scrum Master and the Developer). Scrum does not have autocratic hierarchies in the Scrum team on purpose. Scrum teams are supposed to be self managed and self organizing.
- The Scrum Master is not to act as a project manager, but should be a mentor in the practice of Scrum. The Scrum Master should not tell the Developers what to do nor how to determine which stories go into the sprint, only the Developers can determine how best to achieve priorities set by the Product Owner and how to shape the sprint by considering all dependencies.
- Developer in Scrum means anyone that brings a skill to contribute to the increment, it does not mean software developer or coder (repeat).
- Don't forget the increment at the end of the sprint is a deliverable. You do not have to deploy it, but it should be saved somewhere.
- Please read the Scrum Guide and also get familiar with the Agile manifesto. There is a philosophy behind Agile methodologies like Scrum. For example, working code is more important than documentation.
Scrum Poker
Try this Fibonacci scale for Scrum poker to help with scrum estimates:
