Short descriptions of everyday activities that Scrum Masters and participants must follow for an effective and efficient Agile process.

1. codaflex.com
General Scrum Guidelines
for Everyday Activates
by
Teddy Piperkova
July2021

2. General Scrum Guidelines
2 | P a g e
Before Sprint Starts
• List of PBIs (Product Backlog Items) – clean and prioritized. It is good to keep the Committed
task on top of your list. Remember, each PBI need to have proper State and Assignee.
• Plan your resources even if you did not have time for Backlog Grooming and prioritization. Do
not start planning before you discussed with the other POs (Product Owners) your team’s
capacity for the Sprint.
• Book a room for your Sprint Planning meeting in advance.
Step-by-step Sprint Planning
• Always start with Retrospective as it is important to receive feedback from the team on what
went well and what went wrong.
• Start by creating new Sprint, using name that represents Sprint duration (for example, Apr 16 –
Apr 27, 2022). Be consistent. Think of developers that are part of several teams.
• Try to use two-week Sprints, if you have enough work planned for that duration.
• Clean up the old Sprint from remaining PBIs before moving new items from the Backlog. Use
the new Sprint to create tasks for old PBIs. Do not reopen Done PBIs to create new tasks.
• Decompose PBIs into tasks, which are part of your Sprint.
• Assign and estimate tasks together with the developers. Let people add their own input and do
estimations for themselves.
• You are done with Sprint Planning when you reach the team’s capacity.
• Schedule your Daily Stand-up meetings once your done with the planning by sending a calendar
invitation.
Daily Stand-up Format
• Always start on time! Even if different members of the team are still not in the meeting. They
can catch-up afterwards through the system or by a quick one-on-one discussion.
• If there is a meeting conflict, reschedule it but do not skip it.
• Try to hold the meetings outside the developers’ room. You do not want to distract others
while having this meeting.
• Keep it short by standing during the meeting. If you feel too comfortable, it may take longer
than needed.
• Remember that anybody can be a Presenter! There are no specific roles and each team
member should provide update on their personal tasks and progress.
• Go through the three questions format and keep it quick, avoiding technical talk. If needed,
technical discussions go after the meeting.
• Have an action plan for the Blocked tasks before leaving the room.
Additional Sprint Activities
• Have regular Backlog Grooming by adding all project related work into VSTS. Also, add detailed
descriptions to the PBIs and use information from the Bug Reporting Template when creating
issues.
• When you complete a task that is In Progress move it to Done. There is no need to wait for the
Daily Stand-up.

3. General Scrum Guidelines
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• For tasks that have remaining work after the end of the day, decrease the estimated time
accordingly.
• If you have finished your tasks for the day, get some tasks from the To Do.
• Use the discussion field if you have any comments or questions to others.
• PBIs are assigned and closed by the POs.
• When at capacity and you receive a change request, add a new item but remove something
else that is already part of the Sprint. The removed task can be moved to a future Sprint or
return to the PBI list, depending on its priority. Do not forget to change its State too.
Sprint Wrap-up
• Try to have a Review session every few Sprints when you have enough things to share. This
allows exchange of ideas and successes.
• Each developer needs to prepare a list of Items that can be presented on the Review meeting.
• Try to fit each presentation in five minutes.
Most important of all is to remember – Schedule your meetings and be always on time!
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This document is part of a set, which Codaflex distributes when our Agile Coaches
help clients with the implementation of Agile and Scrum processes.
For more information, go to our website or contact us at info@codaflex.com.