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The Sprint Retrospective occurs after the Sprint Review and prior to the next Sprint Planning.
This is a three-hour time-boxed meeting for one-month Sprints. For shorter Sprints, the event is
usually shorter. The Scrum Master ensures that the event takes place and that attendants
understand its purpose. The Scrum Master teaches all to keep it within the time-box. The Scrum
Master participates as a peer team member in the meeting from the accountability over the
Scrum process.
The purpose of the Sprint Retrospective is to:
Inspect how the last Sprint went with regards to people, relationships, process, and tools;
Identify and order the major items that went well and potential improvements; and,
Create a plan for implementing improvements to the way the Scrum Team does its work.
The Scrum Master encourages the Scrum Team to improve, within the Scrum process
framework, its development process and practices to make it more effective and enjoyable for
the next Sprint. During each Sprint Retrospective, the Scrum Team plans ways to increase
product quality by adapting the definition of “Done” as appropriate.
By the end of the Sprint Retrospective, the Scrum Team should have identified improvements
that it will implement in the next Sprint. Implementing these improvements in the next Sprint is
the adaptation to the inspection of the Scrum Team itself. Although improvements may be
implemented at any time, the Sprint Retrospective provides a formal opportunity to focus on
inspection and adaptation.
Scrum Artifacts
Scrum’s artifacts represent work or value to provide transparency and opportunities for
inspection and adaptation. Artifacts defined by Scrum are specifically designed to maximize
transparency of key information so that everybody has the same understanding of the artifact.
Product Backlog
The Product Backlog is an ordered list of everything that might be needed in the product and is
the single source of requirements for any changes to be made to the product. The Product
Owner is responsible for the Product Backlog, including its content, availability, and ordering.
A Product Backlog is never complete. The earliest development of it only lays out the initially
known and best-understood requirements. The Product Backlog evolves as the product and the
environment in which it will be used evolves. The Product Backlog is dynamic; it constantly
changes to identify what the product needs to be appropriate, competitive, and useful. As long
as a product exists, its Product Backlog also exists.
The Product Backlog lists all features, functions, requirements, enhancements, and fixes that
constitute the changes to be made to the product in future releases. Product Backlog items have
the attributes of a description, order, estimate and value.