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Integrating stakeholders into the Sprint Review bridges gaps between the team and them. It ensures that the team focuses on working on what’s most valuable at present and keeps the product relevant.
By collaborating with the stakeholders, the Scrum Team ensures that the product remains relevant and aligned with business objectives and customer-desired outcomes.
By mastering this practice and collaborating with the stakeholders at the Sprint Review and during the Sprint, the team builds a culture of collaboration, transparency, and shared responsibility, leading to a more robust, responsive, and successful product development journey.
1. Enhanced Feedback Loop:
Inviting stakeholders to Sprint Reviews creates an immediate feedback channel. This allows for real-time input, enabling teams to adjust work or approaches as needed. This constant feedback loop and adjustment helps improve the product to satisfy customer desires and expectations, making it more relevant and user-friendly.
2. Transparency Builds Trust:
Having stakeholders present during these reviews promotes transparency. It allows them to see the progress first-hand, understand the challenges, and appreciate the team's efforts. This transparency builds trust, which is fundamental in maintaining healthy relationships between the team and the stakeholders.
3. Better Decision Making:
Stakeholder participation aids in informed decision-making. Their insights, drawn from different perspectives, can highlight potential risks, uncover new opportunities, and influence the direction of the product building. This collective wisdom ensures more robust decisions.
4. Enhanced Buy-In and Ownership:
When actively involved, stakeholders feel a sense of ownership over the product. This sense of belonging can increase support, help the team deal with the organisation’s policies, and access to the customer.
5. Alignment of Vision and Goals:
Continuous stakeholder engagement ensures that the product’s direction aligns with the organisational goals and stakeholder expectations. This alignment is crucial to avoid deviations and keep the product relevant and valuable to the business.
6. Mitigation of Risks:
Involving stakeholders in Sprint Reviews significantly reduces risks. Their diverse perspectives offer a broader view of potential pitfalls and challenges.
By highlighting these risks early, the team can take proactive measures to deal with them rather than reacting to issues as they arise. This early identification of risks can avoid costly setbacks.
7. Waste Reduction:
Waste in product development often arises from misaligned objectives, unclear work specifications, or building items that are irrelevant or do not meet customer needs.
Stakeholder feedback during Sprint Reviews helps continuously align the product with real user needs and business goals, ensuring that the team's efforts are focused on adding value, thereby reducing the time and cost spent on unnecessary or less important work items.
In product development, involving stakeholders in Sprint Reviews is essential. This approach helps make better decisions and ensures everyone understands the team’s challenges.
Stakeholders often bring different areas of expertise, help in understanding value and can foresee risks that the team might have yet to identify on their own.
This article was first published in the AskScrum.com newsletter.
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