This is the fifth blog post in the “How Much Time Should Each Scrum Practice and Meeting Take” series. This posting focuses on the sprint review.
The purpose of the sprint review meeting is to give everyone (in particular stakeholders) with input to the product development effort an opportunity to inspect and adapt what has been built so far. The sprint review provides a transparent look at the current state of the product, including any inconvenient truths. It is the time to ask questions, make observations or suggestions, and have discussions about how to best move forward given current realities.
How much time teams should budget for the sprint review meeting
The general rule is that the sprint review should take no more than one hour per week of sprint duration. The following table illustrates the rule.
How long your sprint review meeting lasts depends on the length of your sprint
As a general rule, I don't like to exceed timeboxed limits for meetings. However, in the case of the sprint review, I would be willing to go longer if the meeting was yielding excellent feedback. It can be difficult to schedule time with stakeholders, so if we already have them at the review meeting and they are providing excellent input in what we have done and where we are going, I am inclined to exceed the timeboxed limit.
Before exceeding the timebox for a sprint review meeting, I would recommend polling the attendees as to whether they agree the meeting should be extended based on the feedback it is producing. You want your stakeholders to understand that you value their time and understand the importance of a timebox. I would not expect many sprint reviews to exceed their allocated timebox.
If you want to read more about the sprint review, please have a look at Chapter 21 the Essential Scrum book.
The previous post in this series is: ”Daily Scrum Meeting: What? Why? How Long?”
The next post in this series is: “How Much Time Should Teams Budget for the Sprint Retrospective?”