Agile 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Agile Methodology

This guide looks at the four ceremonies that bring one of Agile’s most popular frameworks, Scrum, to life.

Learn how each agile ritual helps empower teams and drive performance while highlighting some tips to help your organization get the most from your ceremonies.

At a glance:

• The four agile ceremonies are Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-Up, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective
• Ceremonies in agile facilitate visibility, transparency, and collaboration.
• Each ceremony has a clear structure and objective.
• Clear communication, flexibility, and cultural alignment are the keys to successful ceremonies.

What are the main agile ceremonies?

Agile ceremonies refer to the four events that occur during a Scrum sprint. Other forms of agile development, such as Kanban and Lean, also have similar practices.

The agile ceremonies list includes:

1. Sprint Planning
2. Daily Stand-Up
3. Sprint Review
4. Sprint Retrospective

While each ceremony is different, they facilitate the same overall purpose. The ceremonies bring teams together with a common goal under a regular rhythm, and they help teams get things done.

"With today's enterprises under increased pressure to respond quickly to the needs of their customers and stakeholders, they must bring new products to market faster and accelerate improvements to existing solutions and services." - State of Agile Report

Why are agile ceremonies important?

Agile ceremonies help organizations adapt to change and succeed. With work planned in smaller portions and over shorter timeframes, they help teams quickly shift direction and course-correct when needed. They form a key part of the broader agile approach that’s now widely adopted in organizations worldwide.

With agile ceremonies, teams in your organization can benefit from:

• Enhanced ability to manage changing priorities
• Acceleration of software development
• Increase in team productivity
• Improved business and IT alignment

It’s important to remember that while ceremonies are an essential part of Scrum, they’re just one of many rituals that help create agile teams and workplaces. To realize the true benefits of agile, you’ll need to do more than include one or more of the ceremonies into your waterfall project.

1. Sprint Planning

The Sprint Planning ceremony sets teams up for success by ensuring everyone understands the sprint goals and how to achieve them.

• Structure - The Product Owner brings the product backlog to discuss with the Development Team. The Scrum Master facilitates. Together, the Scrum Team does effort or story point estimations. The product backlog must contain all the details necessary for estimation. The Product Owner should be able to clarify any doubts regarding the product backlog.

• Attendees - The entire Scrum Team (the Development Team, Scrum Master, and Product Owner).‍

• Timing - At the beginning of each sprint.‍

• Duration - One to two hours per week of iteration. So, if you're planning a two-week sprint, your Sprint Planning should last two to four hours. ‍

• Agile Framework - Scrum. Although Kanban teams also plan, they do it less formally and per milestone, not iteration.

Outcomes

After some team negotiation and discussion, you should have a clear decision on the work that the Development Team can complete during the sprint by the end of Sprint Planning. This is known as the sprint goal.

The sprint goal is an increment of complete work, and everyone should feel confident about the commitment.

The product backlog defines priorities that affect the order of work. Then, the Scrum Master transforms that decision into the sprint backlog.

Top tips

• Focus on collaboration rather than competition.
• Break user stories into tasks to get things more operational for the Development Team. If there's time, assign those tasks during the event.
• Factor in public holidays and any team member’s time off or vacations.
• Keep your team’s pace in mind – a track record of the time it took to implement similar user stories would be helpful.
• Focus on the product backlog and nothing else in terms of work for the sprint.

2. Daily Stand-Up

The daily stand-up brings the team together and sets everyone up for the day. The team uses this time to identify blockers and share plans for the day.

• Structure - This is an informal, standing meeting. All members of the Development Team inform everyone about what they did the day before and what they’re doing today. Members discuss any blockages they have and ask for help from the team if required. Due to time restrictions, the updates should be brief.

• Attendees - Development Team, Scrum Master, Product Owner (optional).

• Timing - Daily, usually in the morning.

• Duration - Short and sharp. No longer than 15 minutes.

• Agile framework - Scrum and Kanban.

Outcomes

The Scrum Master should clear all the blockages that slow down or prevent the Development Team from delivering. As a result, the development process might need to change.

This daily pulse check keeps the team in sync and helps build trust. Together, the group finds ways to support and help each other.

Top tips

• Use a timer to keep this meeting to 15 minutes.
• Hold your stand-up at the same time every day.
• Only discuss the work for the day ahead.
• If the team is distributed, use video conferencing with cameras on.
• Long discussions should happen after the event.
• As the stand-up encourages progress, everyone should provide an update, and everyone should feel accountable.

3. Sprint Review

The Sprint Review is the time to showcase the team’s completed work and gather feedback from stakeholders. A variety of attendees from outside the team offer valuable insights from different viewpoints. This event also helps build trust with both external and internal stakeholders.

• Structure - The Scrum Master takes on the logistics of event preparation. The Product Owner should ask stakeholders questions to gather as much feedback as possible. They should also answer any of their stakeholder’s questions.

• Attendees - Development Team, Scrum Master, Product Owner. Optionally, management, customers, developers, and other stakeholders.

• Timing - At the end of the sprint.

• Duration - In a one-week sprint, the Sprint Review lasts one hour.

• Agile framework - Scrum and Kanban. Kanban teams do these reviews after the team milestones, not sprints.

Outcomes

After this ceremony, the Product Owner might need to adjust or add to the product backlog. They might also release product functionality if it's already complete.

Top tips

• Schedule in time to rehearse before the meeting to help your team present with confidence, especially if external stakeholders are coming along.
• Don’t showcase incomplete work. Review your Sprint Planning and the original criteria if you’re not sure whether the work is complete.
• Besides product functionality, focus on user experience, customer value, and the delivered business value.
• Consider ways you can introduce a celebratory feel to acknowledge the team’s effort.

4. Sprint Retrospective

In this final scrum ceremony in the sequence, you look back on the work you’ve just done and identify ways to do things better next time. The Sprint Retrospective is a tool for risk mitigation in future sprints.

• Structure - The teams discuss what went well throughout the sprint and what went wrong. The Scrum Master should encourage the Development Team to speak up and share not only facts but also their feelings. The goal is to gather rapid feedback for continuous improvement in terms of process. It’s also an opportunity to emphasize good practices that the team adopted and should repeat.

• Attendees - Development Team, Scrum Master, Product Owner (optional).

• Timing - At the end of the sprint.

• Duration - 45 minutes per sprint week.

• Agile framework - Scrum and Kanban (occasionally).

Outcomes

After this session, the team should clearly understand the problems and the wins that happened throughout the iteration. Together, the group comes up with solutions and an action plan to prevent and identify process problems in the next sprint.

Top tips

• Focus on both facts and feelings
• Gather information that helps you focus on continuous improvement – this might include tools and relationships
• Be honest and encourage ideas that solve process-related problems
• Even if everything went well, have this meeting – retrospectives provide ongoing guidance for the next sprint.

"With the speed of change expected to continue, the need has never been greater for an operating model that keep up." - McKinsey

Agile lessons to live by

As a team of experienced agile practitioners, we’ve picked up some key learnings about what it takes to get the most out of your agile ceremonies and create the foundations of a truly agile organization.

Here are our top tips to make your ceremonies a success:

• Be deliberately present - During the ceremonies, remember to take moments to pause and remind yourself of why you’re there. Show others that you’re present by giving them full attention and using your body language. In a remote setting, angle your camera as though you’re sitting across from them, look into the lens regularly, and use a distraction-free background.
• Practice active listening - Think about what the person is saying, who they are, and what they need from you. Are they looking for a soundboard, do they need your help or opinion, or are they looking for an emotional connection?
• Understand motives - Understand the motivations of your teammates before speaking. Consider why they should care about what you’re saying by connecting your message with their own motivations. Provide context where possible to let them know why your message matters.
• Be flexible - It's important to remember that there is not a one size fits all approach to agile ways of working. What works for one team may not work for another, so you need to experiment to find out what works then tailor processes to suit your team's needs.
• Create cultural alignment - The best processes in the world won’t deliver what you need if you don’t have the culture to support their delivery. Agile ceremonies need to be supported by a culture where people are actively engaged, confident to raise issues, and value continuous improvement.

Agile ceremonies lead to better results

While it can take time for teams new to agile to adjust to agile ceremonies, they are worth the effort. By providing a clear structure and achievable outcomes, they help align everyone on the product, communication, and priorities.

The result? Agile teams that provide better quality products faster – and deliver real business outcomes.

Wherever your organization is on your agile journey, it’s worth keeping in mind that each team and each suite of products are different, so there’s no standard recipe for success. The good news is that by working within the continuous improvement mindset the agile framework promotes; you too can iterate and improve your agile ceremonies over time.

Ready to get started?

Easy Agile TeamRhythm supports your team's agile practices in Jira. Supporting your team from planning right through to retrospective, TeamRhythm helps you and your team work better together to deliver value to your customers.

Features include:

• Agile sprint and version planning tool - Planning is quick and easy when you create and estimate issues on the story map. View your work under initiatives and epics, and see swimlane stats at a glance, ensuring team capacity is filled but not overcommitted
• Agile story mapping - Map the customer journey using initiatives, epics, and stories alongside your agile Jira boards. Quickly and easily add new or existing stories inside the story map. Drag and drop to prioritize by value to the customer.
• Product backlog refinement - Escape your flat backlog and view your work on the story map matrix. Drag and drop issues to prioritize or schedule. Quickly update story summaries and story point estimates with inline editing for a better backlog.
• Team retrospectives - Celebrate success, gain insights, and share learnings with team retrospective boards for scrum and kanban, encouraging collaboration and transparency, so you and your team are continuously improving.

Being agile vs doing agile – what’s the difference?

Organizations around the world have recognized the need to respond rapidly to meet the challenges of constant change. As a result, they’re racing to adopt agile ways of working, with the pandemic accelerating agile adoption.

Those who get it right can make a powerful impact on their bottom line and their competitive edge. But for others, the benefits may yet to be seen.

This is where ‘doing agile’ versus ‘being agile’ can make all the difference. Because to truly reap the benefits of agile methodology, organizations need to shift from doing to being.

This article will explain the difference between being agile vs doing agile. Plus, we’ll take you through some of the common challenges many organizations face in their agile journey.

Key points

• To realize the full potential of agile ways of working, teams must cultivate an agile mindset as well as adopt agile processes.
• Moving from ‘doing agile’ to ‘being agile’ takes time, coaching, and a new approach to management.
• Done right, being agile can amplify customer satisfaction, employee engagement, growth, and profitability.

Why agile, and why now?

Agile had already been rising in popularity for over 20 years, but once the pandemic hit, this growth accelerated.

Across every industry, being able to deliver digital experiences is now crucial. Organizations now need to act and think like software companies, with a laser focus on the customer’s online experience. Together with an active approach to finding customers, you need to deliver real value to stand out from competitors.

For organizations looking to survive - and thrive - in this environment, many are turning to agile frameworks to rapidly add customer value and drive business results. Being agile allows teams to:

• Make the complex simple – by working within a clear, structured framework, chaos turns to order.
• Maintain a clear overview – agile teams have a shared understanding of their progress towards their goals.
• Replicate success – if a team finds an effective way to deliver results, they can repurpose and share solutions across the organization.
• Create an aligned, purposeful culture – when hundreds of people across one organization form dozens of agile teams, they build a stable backbone, walking the same path towards the same goal.

"Agile organizations, viewed as living systems, have evolved to thrive in an unpredictable, rapidly changing environment. These organizations are both stable and dynamic. They focus on customers, fluidly adapt to environmental changes, and are open, inclusive, and nonhierarchical; they evolve continually and embrace uncertainty and ambiguity. Such organizations, we believe, are far better equiped than traditional ones for future."

- McKinsey & Company

What does it mean to be agile?

Many organizations incorporate a few agile processes to manage projects. But that doesn’t mean teams have fully understood and embraced the agile methodology. It could be that they’re ‘doing agile’ rather than actually ‘being agile’.

Here’s the difference between the two:

Doing agile

‘Doing agile’ is the misconception that if you do agile things your company will become agile and responsive to change. Organizations that have fallen into this trap may go through the motions of some agile processes, such as daily stand-ups, sprints, and retrospectives. Teams are structured to be small, cross-functional, and collaborative. But by stopping there, those teams don’t become truly agile and they may struggle to see results.

While agile ceremonies, tools, and structures are critical in implementation, they are only part of what makes an organization agile.

Being agile

‘Being agile’ means you incorporate the above activities but go beyond the processes. This means applying an agile mindset and agile values to all areas of the organization. Teams will need training to master the agile mindset and push through any challenges along the way. It takes more time and effort than simply doing agile, but it’s critical if you want to reap the benefits.

What’s an agile mindset?

Embracing an agile mindset means understanding and living its four core values. To be agile, you need to:

1. Respect people - Recognize that people are critical to the success of your organization. Ensure people share common goals, feel safe and empowered to share ideas, and adopt a ‘we’ versus ‘I’ mentality.
2. Optimize flow - Build in quality at each increment so you can identify issues and course-correct early. This helps maximize value and minimize waste while creating a consistent, sustainable flow of work.
3. Encourage innovation - Foster experimentation with collaboration, constructive feedback, and autonomy. Schedule time and space for creativity and ideas to flow.
4. Relentlessly improve - Keep in mind that there is no endpoint with the agile mindset. It’s about continuous improvement, so you need to continually reflect and improve future processes as part of an ongoing practice.

To take these values and make them the foundation of working across your organization, you need to combine agile processes with an agile mindset. Without the agile mindset, you’re not ‘being agile’, and your processes won’t deliver your organization’s full potential.

"The agile mindset is a thought process that involves undersatdning, collaborating, learning, and staying flexible to achieve high-performing results. By combining the agile mindset with processes and tools, team can adapt to change and deliver incremental value to their customers."

- Atlassian

Agile processes and tools aren’t enough

Agile processes, including the ceremonies, tools, and apps, are there to support the mindset of the team. But without getting the mindset right across your organization, you won’t be truly agile.

Fostering the agile mindset gives an organization the ability to rapidly move in any given direction at any given time to deliver the best value to customers. Teams who’ve mastered agile are usually:

• Autonomous and empowered to make decisions around the product and customer experience.
• Able to adapt to change quickly.
• Always willing to learn something new.

Engaged with a shared purpose and collaborative culture.

"It's about being able to pivot to change. Whether that's in terms of people, or resources or budget - whatever that looks like for an organization. If you're able to quickly shift from one area of focus to another before your competitor does, then you have a competitive advantage in the market."

- Sean Blake, Head of Marketing, Easy Agile

Common challenges to look out for as you move from doing agile to being agile

The sooner you can act and move from doing agile towards being agile, the sooner your customers, employees, and your bottom line will benefit.

Here are a few common challenges and tips to overcome them.

• People might hold onto old habits
  People find change hard, especially when habits are ingrained. You might find some people dig their heels in, clinging to the old way of doing things. It’s important to remember it can take time, and people will need support to learn new ways of working. Be sure to bring in plenty of opportunities for feedback and discussion so you can reiterate as a team to find a process that works for your organization.
• It’s not just the team who needs to be coached
  Being agile is a mindset for the entire organization, including managers and executives. If your leaders don’t understand and support agile, it will be hard to get traction and shift old processes and hierarchies. Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches need to spend time coaching leaders to develop new agile mindsets and capabilities.
• For many organizations, being agile requires a new style of management
  The traditional command-and-control management style may have worked in the industrial age. But now it’s a mismatch for the way organizations and people need to work today, and it doesn’t support the agile mindset. To be agile, teams need the trust, autonomy, and ability to take an idea through to execution without any roadblocks. Senior executives must get behind this multifaceted cultural-transformation effort for this to happen.

Are you ready to be agile?

Moving beyond agile processes to scale an agile mindset across an organization isn’t something you can tackle overnight. It takes time, effort, training, and leadership support to internalize agile values and move beyond the command mindset of the past.

You may face challenges along the way, you’ll discover there’s always more to learn, and you must be agile in your adoption of agile.

But the prize for true agility is significant, including increasing customer satisfaction, boosting employee engagement, and improving productivity - making it well worth the investment.

Agility helps modern organizations thrive through change in an uncertain and unpredictable world. For most of us, it’s no longer a desirable way of working - it’s essential.

Agile is about empowering teams to take ownership, feel truly engaged, and foster a culture of collaboration. More than ever, teams are required to deliver with greater adaptability, speed, and engagement. The future is more ambiguous and complex, and Agile teams must know how best to respond to these changing conditions.

Agile experts John Walpole, Dean MacNeil, and Nick Muldoon share their success formula behind the high-functioning Agile teams at Lyft, Valiantys, and Easy Agile. You will learn:

• How to create a compelling 'why' that the whole team can get behind
• How to empower your teams
• The qualities of high-performing Agile teams

WATCH NOW

Create a compelling 'why' that the whole team can get behind

‍

I think Agile is not a silver bullet. We have people who look at Agile and say, "Oh, well, this is going to solve all of our woes." And it's not; it's certainly not a turnkey thing.

Nick Muldoon, Co-CEO at Easy Agile

Agile is not a silver bullet. It is not a methodology that will solve leaders, teams and individuals' problems. Agile is a continuous improvement journey of "adaptability in evolutionary theory; it's about responding to either a new environment or changes in your environment to again, not just survive but to thrive," said Dean.

Set your Agile teams up for success by teaching them to thrive by empowering them to lead change, make mistakes, build a solid foundation, and be open to learning, changing, and communicating the meaningful 'why' behind their work. You will see an explosion in Agile team success when you have a "cohesive team aligned to a common mission with a growth mindset."

Motivate your Agile teams by connecting their work with a meaningful 'why.' Schedule a meeting to ensure you constantly discuss their work's more profound purpose. Bring up a real-life customer example. John shared, "At Lyft, we share stories in a fortnightly meeting. We offer free accessible rides to those in wheelchairs or those who struggle to pay for a ride but need access to transportation to get to work or school.

"Bring your personas to life with these real-life examples, so it's front and center in your employee's minds," said John.

‍

Empowering your teams

Culture eats strategy for breakfast

Peter Drucker

Your employees need to lead the change. "If you look at great leaders in recent Agile transformations, you might want to look at a company like Porsche," said Dean. Dean shares how Porsche has inspired Valiantys because "every employee at Porsche is leading the change. So they're all bought into it; they all have that sense of leadership to drive it.". Porsche's employees are leading the change because their leadership communicates the 'why' well. "Fun is number one when their CIO lists off the top three reasons 'why' everyone is so fired up about the Agile transformation. Because you can have fun on the job, your job is not supposed to be a grim duty. It's supposed to be something you look forward to."

"Empower your teams to make mistakes," said John.

Empower your Agile teams to fail and make mistakes through powerful questions. Leaders have to change their tone from "oh no, who do I fire?" to "what's the challenge? What can I do to help?". Express to your team that you're on a journey to learn as much as they are. In doing so, the leader humanizes themselves and becomes more vulnerable.

Leadership sets the tone. As a company scales, the responsibility to create the culture and the risk appetite falls more on leadership.

Qualities of high-performing, Agile teams

1. Create a solid foundation

Set your Agile team up for success with a stable team unit. Don't keep moving teams around; create long-term Agile teams to allow individuals to get to know each other and humanize one another. "I think stability is key to having the tacit knowledge keeping together and this open mindset where they're willing to learn; I love that," said Nick.

2. Open to learning and adapting

For Agile teams to continuously improve, they must constantly be learning and adapting. "You can't get that learning and adaptation if you keep just stirring the pot. Because you're going to keep scattering that knowledge, you want to take hold, and then, of course, you want to spread the knowledge to the organization then," said Dean.

3. Share feedback and do the retrospective

Ensure your Agile teams are demonstrating working product on a regular occurrence. If you're practicing Scrum, make sure you are doing the weekly sprint review. This allows the team to receive feedback from stakeholders and keep iterating and moving forward, ensuring they stay in movement. "Do your retrospective," said Dean." We're looking at what we delivered, and now we're going to look at how we delivered it." It is imperative that Scrum teams gather at the end of each sprint to discuss what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what can be improved on for next time. Otherwise, you invite complacency and stagnation into your Scrum process — the antithesis of Agile.

Using Easy Agile to set your Agile teams up for success

Easy Agile TeamRhythm supports your team's Agile practices in Jira. The user story map format in TeamRhythm transforms your flat product maps into a dynamic and flexible visual representation of work. Watch the highlights tour to see how Easy Agile TeamRhythm makes sprint planning, managing your backlog, and team retrospectives easier. Visit Atlassian Marketplace to start your free, 30-day trial today.

‍