The Scrum framework requires three roles; product owner, scrum master and development team – but who attends what event in scrum? Detailed below are the four events: sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review and retrospective.
Sprint Planning
The full Scrum team – that is the product owner, scrum master and the development team – all attend sprint planning. The product owner presents the current product backlog and answers any questions the team might have regarding it. The scrum master observes, ensuring any questions are resolved and facilitates the meeting to ensure a successful outcome. Based on these interactions with the scrum master and product owner, the development team should determine what it can realistically deliver and make a forecast for the sprint based on this.
Sprint Planning factsheet
Daily Scrum
All of the development team members are required at the daily scrum. It is also recommended that the scrum master attend to coach the team and facilitate as necessary e.g. teaching the development team to keep the meeting within the 15 minute time-box. Product owners are not required attendees but are recommended to attend when possible to efficiently answer any questions that the team might have, and to highlight and promote quick decision-making. Others might also attend the daily scrum but only as observers – it is the scrum masters job to ensure that they remain observers and do not disrupt the meeting. In all cases, the team should be mindful not to turn the meeting into a status update or reporting session to anybody else. The primary focus must be to inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal and to inspect how progress is trending toward completing the work in the Sprint Backlog.
Daily scrum factsheet
Sprint Review
Required attendees at the Sprint Review are the Scrum team and key stakeholders as invited by the product owner. The stakeholders invited by the product owner may vary sprint to sprint depending on the content of the product increment created. As the key forum for stakeholder feedback, it is vital that all members of the scrum team attend so that they can hear the same information first hand and be able to answer questions regarding the sprint and product increment as necessary.
Sprint Review factsheet
Retrospective
As the key inspect and adapt ceremony for the Scrum teams process, all members of the team are required to attend the retrospective; the development team, the scrum master and the product owner. Having all members of the team present promotes whole-team accountability, transparency and trust. Likewise, it is considered dysfunctional to have anybody outside of the Scrum team regularly attend the retrospective as this could jeopardise the ability of the team to create the safe environment required to allow open, trusting communication.
Retrospective factsheet
