How to Approach Your Agile Release Plan for Successful Development

By now, you’re pretty familiar with Scrum. It’s given your team a framework they can work with to achieve internal goals so they can deliver quality software to customers. But, you can always improve your Scrum practices to continue to delight your customers. 😁 One of these is the daily scrum — a practice that sounds straightforward, but is easy to mismanage (more on this soon 😉).

The daily scrum consists of three elements — Scrum roles, Scrum artifacts, and Scrum events.

In this article, we'll show you how these components fit into the all-important daily scrum meeting, provide some tips to keep your daily scrum running smoothly, and discuss what traps to avoid so that your team is always on task. We'll also point you towards resources that will get you proficient in the other elements of agile. Our goal, as always, is to make you an agile pro. 🏄🏽‍♀️

What is the Daily Scrum Meeting?

Let's do a quick recap of each of them before we dive into the daily scrum:

• Scrum roles: These are the product owner, the Scrum master, and the development team. These Scrum team members work together as a unit to achieve their goals.
• Scrum artifacts: Artifacts include the product backlog, the sprint backlog, and the increment. The artifacts represent information to the team that enables them to have transparent views against which to measure their progress.
• Scrum events: The sprint, sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review, and sprint retrospective give the team an opportunity to meet and refine any of the Scrum artifacts that need adjusting to keep the team's goals within view.

The daily scrum is a meeting between team members to discuss its current sprint progress. It's time to discover if any adjustments to the sprint or the product backlog need to be made in order to achieve its sprint goal.

Importance of Daily Scrum

The daily scrum plays a crucial role in enhancing both team coordination and communication. This brief, focused meeting offers the team a structured environment to align on progress and obstacles, contributing to several key areas:

1. Progress Transparency: Team members get a clear view of what everyone is working on, which fosters accountability and mutual support.
2. Impediment Identification: Problems and potential roadblocks are surfaced early, allowing the team to address them promptly and minimize project delays.
3. Focused Collaboration: By keeping discussions relevant and on-point, the team can spend their time more effectively, concentrating on solutions rather than prolonged debates.
4. Goal Alignment: The meeting helps reaffirm and refocus efforts toward the sprint goals, ensuring everyone is aligned and moving in the same direction.

By adhering to best practices, such as keeping the meeting time-boxed and promoting an inclusive atmosphere, teams can maximize the benefits of the daily scrum, leading to a more cohesive and efficient working environment.

Key Participants in the Daily Scrum

Development team

The development team members are the main participants in the daily scrum. During the meeting, they report on their progress towards the sprint goal to discover if any adjustments need to be made. They can do this by each answering three questions:

1. What did I work on yesterday towards the sprint goal?
2. How do I plan on working towards the sprint goal today?
3. ​Is there anything preventing me from finishing what I am working on?

By doing so, everyone on the team is in the loop of the full team's progress. The answers to these questions also allow the team to uncover any blockers and adjust the sprint backlog accordingly. An example of a blocker may be a bug that prevents one developer from finishing her assigned user story in the sprint.

Scrum master and product owner

In traditional Scrum, the Scrum master and product owner aren’t active participants — and aren’t technically required — in the daily scrum meeting since they don’t do the development work that will achieve the sprint goal. However, they can still be valuable meeting participants. It’s up to the Scrum team to decide if they should attend.

• The product owner can lead the way in adjusting the sprint's backlog items. For example, the bug that is blocking other work can be moved so it gets fixed in time to keep the sprint goal within reach.
• The Scrum master can make sure that daily scrum best practices are being followed and that the team is avoiding some of the common pitfalls that betray the objectives of the daily scrum meeting. Let's look at those next.

What's the Difference Between Daily Scrum and Daily Standup?

Sometimes, it can be confusing to tell the differences between daily scrum and daily standup — and sometimes the terms are used interchangeably. However, it's worth pointing out the differences between the two.

A daily scrum is an event that is defined in the Scrum guide. So, then what is daily stand-up, and how is it different? 🤔

A daily stand-up is a daily meeting whose objective is to provide team members with progress towards a common goal. However, it is less restrictive in terms of its participants and time limits. In other words, team members outside of the Scrum team can participate and the meeting can run longer than 15 minutes. For example, a company may conduct a daily stand-up that includes its entire staff or a particular department whose progress updates are not limited to the development of software.

Daily Scrum Best Practices

So, what are the best practices for conducting your daily scrum meetings effectively?

1. Complete the daily scrum in a time box

A 15-minute time frame is most commonly used to ensure that the team stays focused and on point. After all, team members only need to answer their three questions succinctly and effectively.

2. Conduct the meeting at the same time and place every day

This will provide a level of consistency and regularity and will help foster the Scrum values of commitment and focus.

3. Include the same team members in each daily scrum meeting

If you have a rotating cast of characters, then you run the risk of disruptions. Some people in the meeting will likely be missing context from prior meetings and will need to be updated.

Daily Scrums for Remote or Distributed Teams

Daily scrums are pivotal in ensuring team alignment, but for remote or distributed teams, they require thoughtful execution to maintain effectiveness. Here's how you can make the most of your virtual daily scrums:

Leverage Video Meetings Intelligently

Video meetings bring the advantage of live conversation, crucial for real-time collaboration and clarity.

• Respect Personal Needs: Recognize that being on camera can be draining. Offer flexibility by allowing team members to choose when to use their cameras.
• Avoid Fatigue: Encourage camera use for important discussions but provide options for audio-only participation to prevent exhaustion.

Manage Time Zones Wisely

Distributed teams often span multiple time zones. Here's how to navigate the challenge:

• Schedule Smartly: Find a suitable meeting time that works for the majority. For instance, someone might join in the mid-morning while it’s early morning for others.
• Consider Asynchronous Updates: When time zones are vastly different, rely on asynchronous communication like task board comments or chat channels to keep everyone informed without disrupting their work-life balance.

Utilize Visual Tools

Visual aids can significantly enhance understanding and engagement in virtual meetings.

• Screen Sharing: Use screen sharing to display task boards or project management software, providing a clear, visual context for discussions.
• Collaborative Tools: Leverage tools like Miro or Trello for visual brainstorming and task tracking during the scrum.

Define Working Agreements

Creating clear working agreements ensures everyone is on the same page regarding processes and expectations.

• Communication Methods: Specify how team members should communicate, whether through video calls, messaging apps, or emails.
• Collaboration Tools: Decide on which tools to use for documentation, real-time collaboration, and async updates. Popular options include Slack for communication and Jira for task management.

Daily Scrum Pitfalls

There are tempting activities to avoid while conducting your daily scrum meeting. These are some of the common pitfalls to avoid:

1. Using the meeting as a status update

To the product owner, Scrum master, or other stakeholders. The main objective of this meeting is for the development team to answer their three questions so that they can make any needed adjustments to keep the sprint goal intact. It should not be used as a status meeting for developers to report on the progress of their work.

2. Turning it into a problem-solving session

To resolve any blocks that are discussed in the meeting within the 15-minute time frame. One thing will undoubtedly happen if the team attempts this — the meeting will run too long! The Scrum master should advise the team to stay on task during the meeting and defer these problem-solving attempts to time outside of the daily scrum meeting.

3. Focusing on a task board

As a means of tracking progress. The daily scrum meeting is a time for discussion. If the team is staring at a task board, it's wasting valuable time by focusing on the status of tasks and not on talking about making adjustments to its work.

In addition to these key points, there are several other common mistakes that can derail the effectiveness of a daily scrum:

• It’s become a boring status meeting that no one wants to attend. This indicates a lack of engagement and purpose.
• Developers are reporting personal performance to a scrum master or manager, which can undermine the collaborative spirit of the team.
• The meeting isn’t held if the scrum master can’t make it that day. This dependency can disrupt the consistency of daily progress checks.
• The team is trying to solve problems and find solutions during the daily scrum, which should be avoided to respect the timebox.
• The daily scrum is being used to refine work items, which is not its intended purpose. Refinement should occur separately.
• The timebox isn’t respected, leading some team members to feel like the meeting is a burden. It's crucial to stick to the 15-minute limit.
• Some developers think they don’t need to show up, which can result in misalignment and missed opportunities for team synchronization.

By being aware of these common pitfalls and maintaining a focused and efficient daily scrum, teams can ensure they are making the most of their time together and keeping their sprint goals on track.

Master Daily Scrum and Become an Agile Pro

At Easy Agile, we provide products to manage all of your Scrum events. We are passionate about making agile accessible and easy to understand for its participants. In addition to our products, we love to provide resources so you can level up your agile game 💪. Check out our blog and our podcast to become an agile pro!

A sprint backlog is like an agile team's treasure map — checking off each item is like visiting a different place on the map. By the end of a sprint or iteration, the team will have delivered previously agreed outcomes and ultimately achieved their sprint goal. This is like getting to the ✖️ on a treasure map.

Join us as we find the answers you need to successfully complete each sprint. You'll learn about a sprint backlog’s purpose, plus who creates, owns, updates, and uses it.

What's a sprint backlog?

A sprint backlog consists of the items that need to be completed in order to get to the sprint goal. It should go into artifact during the sprint planning meeting. A sprint backlog has three parts:

• The sprint. Each sprint backlog targets a specific iteration.
• The sprint goal. This is the higher level aim for each sprint. To achieve it, the development team completes certain items from the product backlog.
• A plan. The sprint backlog represents a plan to deliver a product increment by the end of the sprint. It's organized to allow for progress tracking with to-do, in-progress, and done items, plus effort estimations and remaining workload.

The sprint backlog should always be accessible and up-to-date so that the development team understands the work and can see what is coming up next. It should also have enough detail to allow tracking work progress.

Each sprint starts with a sprint backlog, and the artifact's lifespan equals the sprint's duration. You may expect to find work items — user stories, tasks, or bugs — in it.

The sprint backlog is the development team's go-to home to find all the ideas for what to work on. At every Daily Stand-Up,, the team looks at it to let others know what they did the day before. Additionally, they recall or adjust priorities based on what they need to do for the next day(s).

🧐 During the Daily Stand-Up, developers also use the sprint backlog to evaluate the sprint's progress.

The sprint backlog is not only a way of keeping the development team's eyes on the prize. 👀 It's also a way to discuss how well they achieved the sprint goal.

At any point in a sprint, to-do, in-progress, and done items are included in the sprint backlog for anyone to review and use to calculate the remaining workload. This helps verify if the development team is on track to achieve the sprint goal. ✌️

Jira provides a burndown chart to check the development team's work. This displays the remaining workload for the current sprint. In addition, the chart shows:

• Work in progress
• The distribution of work throughout the iteration

A Jira burndown chart also helps evaluate whether additional items fit into the sprint and effort estimations were accurate.

🛑 Keep in mind that you don't need a sprint backlog if you follow the Kanban framework. That’s because Kanban isn’t about working in timeboxes (the sprints).

Now, the sprint backlog isn't an off-the-shelf artifact that you can use in your project — every project is unique. So, someone must be responsible for populating the sprint backlog with work items.

Besides defining what a sprint backlog is, we should discuss what sets them apart from product backlogs.

Sprint backlogs vs. product backlogs

Though their names are similar, a sprint backlog and product backlog serve different purposes. A product backlog is:

• A collection of work items to either bring a new product to the market or improve an existing product
• A list of work items to tackle in the future
• A set of work items arranged by priority, with the most priority at the top
• The source of the sprint backlog items

On the other hand, a sprint backlog is:

• A subset of work items from the product backlog
• A group of items to work on during the next sprint

Here’s how the two backlogs meet: The product backlog provides work items for a sprint backlog. And, by the end of a sprint, the team might transfer incomplete work to the next sprint or the product backlog. If the work items have high priority, they should go into the next sprint. If not, they should go into the product backlog for a later sprint.

Essentially, a product backlog covers a greater amount of time than a sprint backlog. However, like the sprint backlog, the product backlog might evolve to reflect changes in the market or customer needs and, the development team needs both in order to deliver product changes.

Now, the sprint backlog isn't an off-the-shelf artifact that you can use in your project — every project is unique. So, someone must be responsible for populating the sprint backlog with work items.

Who owns and creates sprint backlogs?

Here are the team members involved in creating sprint backlogs:

• The Scrum Master. During the Sprint Planning ceremony, the Scrum Master uses the product backlog to create the sprint backlog — the output. However, the Scrum Master doesn't do it alone.
• The development team. When moving product backlog items to the sprint backlog, the Scrum Master considers the development team's input. ⚖️
• The Product Owner. The Scrum Master needs the Product Owner's agreement to include product backlog items in the sprint backlog. 👌 And if the development team has questions about the product backlog, the Product Owner is the one to ask.

The sprint backlog's creation is one part of the agile workflow that shows how essential teamwork is to agile. Nevertheless, the sprint backlog must always be owned by someone throughout the workflow. Otherwise, these artifacts can get lost and become outdated.

Scrum methodology says that the whole agile team owns the Sprint Backlog. And by "agile team," we mean the Scrum Master, the Product Owner, and the development team.

That’s because all agile team members contribute:

• The Product Owner knows what the development team should deliver by the end of the sprint. Plus, they order product backlog items by priority. In other words, the Product Owner constrains the product backlog items that should go into the next sprint backlog.
• The Scrum Master has enough experience to distribute the development team's work throughout the sprint. When considering sprint backlog item dependencies, that distribution makes the most sense.
• The development team knows how long similar Sprint Backlog items take to complete. ⏲️ This means they can determine the sprint goal's feasibility within a certain time frame.

Remember, the sprint backlog is a living document, so team members should update it as needed. Let’s look at how a sprint backlog can change.

Updating the sprint backlog

The sprint backlog should adapt to answer market trends and customer needs as they arise. Those changes might influence items in the product backlog and how they’re prioritized. As a result, the sprint backlog changes.

Let's have a look at what may cause a sprint backlog to change and who makes the updates:

1. Effort estimations were not accurate enough. If the development team realizes that some work items will take longer than expected, they should raise a 🚩. They should then negotiate the scope of the sprint backlog with the Product Owner without compromising the sprint goal.
2. A new, higher-priority user story, task, or bug comes up. If that happens, the development team should add it to the sprint backlog. That might impact the sprint's duration or push some items to the next sprint.
3. Progress in completing a user story or a task or solving a bug changes daily. As this happens, the development team should keep updating the remaining workload they estimated for the current sprint. And they should do it during the Daily Stand-Up or Daily Scrum meeting. Once the development team finishes all the work in the sprint backlog, they achieve the sprint goal. This means the development team implemented the product increment, which is ready for delivery. 📦
4. A sprint backlog item is no longer needed. This might be due to a shift in the market or customer needs. If that happens, the development team should remove the item from the artifact. 🗑️
5. The development team better understands sprint backlog requirements as the sprint continues. So, they might realize that to achieve the sprint goal, they need to include more items in the sprint backlog.

The sprint backlog: A guide for sprint success

A sprint backlog is a guide for completing a sprint goal. This means that its lifecycle is short and equals the iteration's duration. It's a visual representation of the sprint that supports Scrum team discussions on in-progress and to-do work.

This backlog may also be the most reassuring Scrum artifact for developers, as it assures them the work is organized and no additional work items will fall from the sky without their knowledge. If the workload must increase, the team will debate it and weigh the developers' experience-based opinion.

With a sprint backlog, the team perfects its ability to plan sprints, estimate effort, and allocate resources. They learn how long work takes and how much of it fits into a sprint. And by learning this, the team learns the resources they need to get to the finish line.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm is collaborative sprint planning tool that helps your team with the shared context that the story map format provides. TeamRhythm helps your team to:

• Visualize a meaningful picture of work on the user story map, sequenced into sprint swimlanes
• Create, estimate and prioritize user stories right on the story map
• See comitment at a glance with sprint statistics and sprint goals displayed on each swimlane

Try planning your sprints with Easy Agile TeamRhythm. We’re confident it will help your team collaborate even more seamlessly.

Kanban vs. Scrum — are they different, and can software and product development use them together? The answer to both questions is YES!

Both Kanban and Scrum are popular agile methodologies. They are different, but they can be used together. They are each part of agile, a better way of working that focuses on iteration and collaboration to reduce waste and maximize efficiency.

Agile is the antithesis of classical project management. Think of it like jazz vs classical music. Rather than one composer bringing an already composed and organized piece of music to an orchestra and dictating what happens where, jazz is collaborative, each band member feeds off of each other, creating music in an agile, iterative process.

This post will take a deep dive into both Kanban and Scrum methodologies. Continue reading to discover the differences and similarities between Kanban vs. Scrum, and learn how they can be effectively used together.

How is the agile methodology different from project management?

The traditional project management methodology is linear, meaning each project element is completed in sequential order. Only when each element is completed can you move onto the next one. Think of traditional project management as an assembly line. It has a strict succession of steps that are planned out by the project manager before any new work or iterations can begin.

The project manager is the person the entire team depends on for leadership. The flow of work remains the same from project to project, and the steps rarely evolve.

By contrast, agile is a non-linear way of working that focuses on flexibility and collaboration between team members. Agile project management focuses on getting something completed that stakeholders can see and evaluate on a regular basis, so value is continuously provided.

Each iteration yields new, actionable insights from both the team and the customer about what’s working, what isn’t, and what needs to change. It’s a multifaceted approach that eliminates the bottlenecks that can arise in the traditional method.

Kanban vs. Scrum

Kanban vs. Scrum is not a dichotomy. They are both agile methodologies designed to help teams work in an iterative process. They are both systems that are regularly used in the development process to ensure a value-driven approach. The goals and methodology are the same, but the steps are different.

A Kanban workflow is a way to visually organize tasks that ensures work items move forward while allowing changes and adjustments to be made along the way. A scrum works in 2-4 week sprints designed to complete a set amount of work or solve a specific problem. Throughout each sprint, teams check in daily to ensure progress and to identify any possible roadblocks.

Kanban vs. Scrum isn’t a one or the other choice. Both might be used at the same time, depending on what’s required of projects or user stories. Learn more about the differences and similarities of these two methods below.

Kanban vs. Scrum: Kanban methodology

Kanban was originally utilized by Taiichi Ohno, an engineer at Toyota, as a lean manufacturing system that decreased waste and increased efficiency. The Kanban method is a task management tool designed to maximize efficiency by visualizing all of the required work and limiting works in progress.

Work items are represented visually on Kanban boards so that every team member can see the state of each piece of work at any given time. It enables real-time communication and full transparency between team members since each work item is intentionally assigned. A Trello board is a simple example of a Kanban.

How to use Kanban

With a Kanban, work flows visually through various stages of completion to promote cohesive collaboration and real-time communication across teams. In its simplest form, a Kanban is a To-Do, Doing, and Done board. Work moves from one section to the next on a physical or digital Kanban board, depending on how far along the specific task is.

To solve more complex problems, which is usually the case in software development, a Kanban can become more advanced with added layers for specific clients, products, or deliverables.

A key aspect of the Kanban methodology is that each person is only allowed to work on one task at a time. This ensures no aspect ever moves too far forward without working in unison with the rest of the tasks on deck. The one-at-a-time system identifies critical connections between tasks as well as potential roadblocks that could cause delays.

Encouraging cross-functional teams to intentionally identify work items ensures tasks are appropriately prioritized. It also combats the negative effects of multitasking, allowing developers to zero in on one task at a time.

Kanban vs. Scrum: Scrum methodology

Scrum, sometimes called a “scrumban,” is based on empiricism and lean thinking. Empiricism is the belief that knowledge comes from hands-on experience and objective, observable facts. Lean thinking focuses on the essentials, bringing value to individuals while eliminating waste. A scrum uses real-time collaboration over theorization to provide a lightweight framework for solving complex problems.

The Scrum process uses an interactive and incremental approach that manages risk and enhances predictability through set intervals of iteration called sprints. The sprints yield an imperfect but valuable version of a product the team can quickly bring to stakeholders, whose feedback is then integrated into the next sprint. The sprints continue until the desired outcome or product is achieved.

How to use Scrum

A Scrum takes place over a set amount of time called a sprint. Each sprint generally takes two weeks to a maximum of four weeks to complete. The important part is that the time frame is set before the Scrum begins.

There are three main components of a Scrum:

1. Roles: The people

• Product owner
• Scrum master
• Development team

2. Artifacts: What gets done

• Product backlog
• Sprint backlog
• Increments

3. Ceremonies: Recurring events

• Sprint planning
• Daily Scrum
• Sprint review
• Sprint retrospective

The product owner orders and prioritizes backlog items, which are the aspects of a product that need completion. At the beginning of a Scrum, the product owner designates which artifacts from the product backlog move to the sprint backlog. The sprint backlog represents the goals and the desired outcomes of the upcoming sprint.

💡 Use Easy Agile TeamRhythm to transform flat product backlogs into impactful, visual representations.

The Scrum master helps everyone understand Scrum theory and practice. They are responsible for the effectiveness of the Scrum team. Throughout the 2-4 week sprint, the team focuses on the backlog, checking in for daily scrums or daily stand-ups. During these Scrum meetings, team members share what story points they completed, what story points they will complete next, as well as any roadblocks that stand in the way.

Deliverables are produced on a regular basis, and adjustments are made along the way as needed. A Scrum board or Kanban board might be used to help teams visualize their progress throughout the sprint.

Ceremonies are the recurring events held by Scrum teams cycling through on a 2-4 week basis. A Scrum begins with a short planning phase, then the work begins. The Scrum team meets daily to review progress and make changes as needed.

At the end of each sprint, a sprint review is held with stakeholders or clients to ensure value is being met, and continuous improvements are pushed forward. Lastly, a retrospective meeting takes place with the project owner, scrum master, and development team to review the past two weeks, including successes, key metrics, and challenges to be addressed before the next sprint begins.

Using Kanban and Scrum together

It doesn't need to be Kanban vs. Scrum — they can work together. A development team might choose to use the Kanban system within a Scrum to provide a visual representation of work moving forward throughout each sprint.

They are both valuable systems in your agile toolkit that work together to provide prioritization, collaboration, and constant value delivery. So, you don’t ever have to choose between Kanban vs. Scrum. Save the decision-making for the real problems, like what to put on the pizzas you order for your team. 🍕

A Scrum framework provides designated blocks of time for teams to complete a specific deliverable or set of deliverables while providing daily Scrum meetings to ensure cohesion and advancement. The Kanban system will ensure tasks are taken on one at a time in an evolving, visual process.

Learn the ways of the Scrum with Easy Agile

Easy Agile crafts solutions to make every agile team more effective. We help teams build simple and collaborative user story maps in Jira for backlog grooming, version planning, and silky-smooth sprints.

We believe there is a better way to work, and we want to help teams just like yours. Learn more about our suite of agile apps and follow our blog for the latest agile trends, tips, and more.