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Sprint Ceremonies

Daily Standup​

The team meets daily to synchronize on current work, surface and discuss (as needed) blockers, and communicate any changes in priorities or timelines. Both Site and Platform teams join a single meeting. Typically there is some brief small talk before the two teams join breakout rooms and handle their standups separately.

  • Participants: Engineering manager, engineers, and Product with the EM leading the ceremony. Occasionally Design or WebOps will join if pressing issues need to be addressed.
  • Format: The EM will move through the Linear board one at time, allowing each engineer to communicate what they worked on the previous day, what they were planning on working on the current day, and any questions or blockers they may have. There is a focus on what can be completed within the day vs just worked on, and if any questions or discussions require a longer conversation, we table them until 'Round 2'. After the engineers have given their updates, Product will give their update and communicate any new or updated priorities or timelines. The team then moves to 'Round 2'. Attached to the meeting invite is a document that has a running daily list of Round 2 topics. Engineers are encouraged to add items they would like to discuss during standup to this list, or items can be added on the fly as updates are given. The team decides who needs to stick around for Round 2 based on the topics and excuses the unnecessary parties.
  • Common norms: Engineers are responsible for keeping their board up to date, which is mostly handled via the Github/Linear integration. Engineers can add any topics to Round 2 ahead of daily standup. On Friday, both teams meet for a longer period of time during which team members rotate asking the 'Friday Question'. This is a chance for the team to get to know each other more and have friendly conversation.

Refinement​

Engineering and Product leaders meet once a week to refine backlog tasks, accept items from triage, create/update project plans, and generally sync on active and future sprints.

  • Participants: Engineering manager, Director of Engineering, and Director of Product with the EM or Director of Product leading the ceremony.
  • Format: Product keeps a running list of adhoc items to discuss, and then the team reviews tickets in the triage section of Linear. We review tickets to ensure we have everything we need, understand the ask, and then point and accept the ticket into the backlog. Once we have covered triage the team reviews the current backlog and discusses and points any new/unpointed priority tickets.
  • Common norms: Typically in the refinement meeting that is the same week as planning, the EM will have tickets prepped in the upcoming sprint to review with Engineering and Product leaders for signoff.

Retro​

At the end of every sprint we hold a retrospective. The team gets together to discuss how they worked together, where there were issues or challenges, and what could be improved in future sprints.

  • Participants: Engineering manager, engineers, Director of Engineering, and Director of Product with the EM leading the ceremony.
  • Format: The EM leads the session currently facilitated in FigJam. The team reviews items from the previous retro's 'What should we do differently' section and discusses any progress or updates. Then the team takes ~5min to add their individual items to 'What went well', 'What could have gone better', 'What should we do differently' and 'Shout outs'. The team moves through the board, each engineer reading their own feedback and elaborating when necessary. The final section discussed is 'What should we do differently'. For items in this section the team should talk through action items and assign ownership.
  • Common norms: EM typically documents retro action items and brings updates for future retros.

Planning​

  • Participants: Engineering manager, engineers, and Product with the EM leading the ceremony.
  • Format: The EM will select tickets based on the team's typical capacity (28-30 points currently) ahead of meeting with the team for planning. During planning the team reviews each ticket one by one and then assigns to the selected engineer.
  • Common norms: Once all tickets have been distributed each individual engineer is responsible for reviewing the tickets in their sprint more thoroughly and bringing up any point concerns or questions.