Running the Sprint Review remotely

In a room, a Sprint Review has a natural way of becoming a conversation. Someone leans forward, someone points at the screen, a stakeholder asks to try something. On a call, the same group tends to sit in silence while one person shares a screen. The Guide says the event is a working session and the team should avoid limiting it to a presentation, and remote working pushes hard in the opposite direction.

What stays the same

Everything the Guide says about the Review holds. Its purpose is to inspect the outcome of the Sprint and determine future adaptations. The Scrum Team presents the results of its work to key stakeholders and progress toward the Product Goal is discussed. The event is the second to last of the Sprint and has a maximum of four hours for a one-month Sprint, usually shorter for shorter Sprints. Only work that meets the Definition of Done is shown.

What the setting changes is the means of keeping people engaged and the means of capturing what they say. The GOV.UK Service Manual's advice on agile working environments notes that a team should be able to collaborate easily even when people are in different offices or working remotely, and that short, informal conversations are a way to test assumptions. A remote Review depends on creating those conversations deliberately.

Principles that carry over to video

Let stakeholders touch the product. The strongest antidote to the presentation trap is to give a stakeholder a working environment and a short task: "try to cancel an appointment". Their reaction is better evidence than any demonstration. If the Increment cannot be tried in this way, prepare a guided session where a team member drives and the stakeholder says where to click.

Keep the group small enough to talk. A video call of thirty people becomes a broadcast. Aim for a number that allows everyone to speak, and use a second channel for those who only want to observe.

Send the questions first. A day before, circulate the Sprint Goal, what will be shown and two or three questions you need answered. Stakeholders arrive with views.

Capture feedback where everyone can see it. Share the Product Backlog or a notes page on screen and write as people speak. It reassures stakeholders that they were heard and lets them correct the notes. See turning review feedback into backlog changes.

Use the tools of the call. Polls, chat and hand-raising help quieter people contribute. A running chat can carry questions that would otherwise wait until the end.

Keep to the timebox. Fatigue on video is real, and the benefit of a shorter event is greater. A two-week Sprint's Review of an hour or less is usually enough.

A worked agenda

This is an illustrative agenda for a one-hour remote Review at the end of a two-week Sprint, with eight stakeholders and the Scrum Team.

The structure is nothing special. What it does is spend most of the time on hands-on use and discussion, and little on presentation.

Time zones and absences

Stakeholders in different time zones are a common reason for remote Reviews to be poor. There are three honest options. Choose a time that costs each region a reasonable inconvenience in turn. Hold the Review twice, with the Product Owner carrying the notes from the first to the second, and accept the extra work. Or ask regional representatives to attend on behalf of their group and to bring the group's questions. A recording is a useful supplement for those who could not attend, but it should not become the main event, because the value lies in people responding to each other.

What goes wrong

• The screen-share lecture. One person talks for forty minutes. Fix it by setting a limit on presentation time and handing control to a stakeholder.
• Silence mistaken for approval. On video, quiet people disappear. Ask by name, and use polls or chat.
• A product that cannot be tried remotely. If the environment is unreliable, the Review turns into a slideshow. Test the environment before the call.
• Lost notes. Feedback written in a chat thread is not in the backlog. Assign a scribe and move notes into the backlog the same day.
• Everyone attends everything. Fatigue lowers quality. The Product Owner can invite groups for the parts that matter to them.
• No decisions. The event ends on "thanks, great work". Read back the decisions before closing.

Preparing the environment

A remote Review lives or dies on the state of the thing being shown. Before the call, the team should check that the test environment is up, that the data in it makes sense to a visitor, that the accounts stakeholders will use work, and that nobody has deployed something half-finished an hour earlier. A short rehearsal with one team member acting as a stakeholder catches most problems. It is also kinder to the stakeholders: a person who is asked to try a product and is met with an error message will often decide the product is poor, whatever the team's intentions.

Agree a fallback in advance. If the environment fails, the team can switch to a recorded walkthrough of the same flow, and use the remaining time to discuss it. That is a weaker Review, but it keeps the decisions on the agenda.

Hybrid Reviews

When part of the group is in a room and part is on screen, the room dominates. Treat the event as fully remote: everyone joins from their own device, even those sitting together, so that remote participants have equal voice. If this is not possible, appoint someone in the room to watch the chat and bring in remote voices.

The Scrum Master's role

The Guide says the Scrum Master ensures that events take place and are positive, productive and kept within the timebox. For a remote Review that includes testing the tools in advance, managing the chat, noticing who has not spoken, and making sure the Review ends on time with the decisions stated.

How to practise it

Plan your next remote Review so that at least half of it is a stakeholder using the product or discussing with the Product Owner. In the simulator the Review at step 4.1 is a conversation with stakeholders about a real Increment, which is the model to keep when it moves online.