Review

The Agile Sprint Review, a ceremony held at the end of an iteration to demonstrate completed work and gather feedback from stakeholders. A crucial distinction is made between a review and a traditional progress update. The speaker emphasizes that the focus must be on what is unequivocally done, not on partial completion. Phrases like "70% finished" are discouraged; instead, the team presents a clear, binary picture of which work items met their definition of done and which did not.

A typical review begins by showing the final state of the team's Kanban Board, which provides a transparent summary of the sprint's outcome. The core of the meeting involves demonstrating the new functionality delivered in the completed User Stories. This showcase is a critical opportunity to solicit feedback from stakeholders, which helps validate the work and catch any misinterpretations before the product is released. To further build trust and transparency, teams are encouraged to share performance metrics like their velocity chart or burndown chart, which illustrate their predictability and efficiency over time.

The process of concluding a sprint differs between tools. In Jira, the review culminates in a team member manually clicking "Complete Sprint," a formal action that closes the iteration. In contrast, Azure Boards operates on an automated cadence, meaning there is no manual closing step; the sprint simply ends on its scheduled date. Regardless of the tool, the review's purpose remains the same: to focus on the delivered scope and foster a feedback loop, which is a hallmark of agile development, as opposed to traditional project management's focus on managing schedule and resources.