4 Tips for Managing Effective Agile Meetings
Tags: meetings, agile, scrum, agilemethodology
Published: 2023-01-31 06:28:50

---
title: 4 Tips for Managing Effective Agile Meetings
published: true
date: 2022-12-12 18:30:17 UTC
tags: meetings,agile,scrum,agilemethodology
canonical_url: https://blog.ones.com/4-tips-for-managing-effective-agile-meetings
---

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*AfL_v8itEdoCvKtZ.jpg)

Statistics show that a whopping **$37 billion** in the US alone is wasted on unproductive meetings, and about **71%** of meetings are considered ineffective.  
Meetings are central to the **Agile software development** process. These meetings help Agile teams to plan their work, check the progress of their work, review their work, and perform a retrospective of the work done. Effective management of **Agile meetings** is central to embracing the Agile mindset.  
In this post, we’ll explain the different types of **Agile meetings** -what they are, their objectives, and the duration they should run. Further, helpful tips on managing Agile meetings are provided at the end of the post. In this article, we’ll focus on the Scrum framework.

### How Many types of Agile Meetings are there?

The Agile software development process has **four meetings** /events or ceremonies

#### 1. Sprint Planning Meeting

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/0*Q3FcM9Ct9H_NXAiQ.png)

#### What is it?

In this meeting, the team decides and discusses the work they want to tackle in the upcoming sprint and prioritizes the work accordingly.

#### Meeting Objectives:

- Sprint goal is defined.
- Work items from the product backlog are selected for the next sprint
- A plan on how to work on the selected work items is decided.

#### Who attends the meeting?

- The Product Owner (PO)
- Scrum Master (SM)
- Development team

#### What is the duration?

For a sprint duration of one week, it is recommended to keep the limit at 2 hours. Similarly, for two weeks‘ sprint duration, the limit is 4 hours. The sprint planning meeting must not go beyond 8 hours.

### 2. Daily Standup Meeting

#### What is it?

The **daily standup meeting** happens every day of the sprint. The development team members quickly check in to learn about each other’s progress in the assigned tasks.

#### Meeting Objectives:

Each member of the development team provides input to the following three questions.

- What work was done yesterday to help reach the sprint goal?
- What work shall be done today?
- Is there anything that is hindering the progress?

#### Who attends the meeting?

The development team member must attend the meeting.  
What is the duration?  
The standup meeting is a short and very focused meeting that lasts only 15 minutes.

### 3. Sprint Review Meeting

#### What is it?

In the sprint review meeting, the development team presents the work that was done during the sprint. Most often, a demo of the work done is given. This meeting aims to collect as much feedback as possible.

#### Meeting Objectives?

- Feedback from the stakeholders is collected.
- The definition of Done may be modified in this meeting.
- The product backlog is also updated with new features.

#### Who attends the meeting?

- Product Owner
- Scrum Master
- Development team
- Relevant stakeholders

#### What is the duration?

The sprint review meeting is usually scheduled for 1 hour for a one-week sprint. For two-week sprint, the meeting duration is 2 hours. The meeting must never go beyond 4 hours.

### 4. Sprint Retrospective Meeting

#### What is it?

The team reflects on how they worked together in the last sprint in this meeting. At the end of the session, the group agreed on one crucial action plan that must be implemented in the next sprint to improve the process.

#### Meeting Objectives:

Specifically, the team discusses

- What went well?
- What didn’t go well?
- What could be improved in the next sprint?

#### Who attends the meeting?

- Scrum Master
- Development team

#### What is the duration?

For a week-long sprint, the meeting duration is 45 minutes. If the sprint is two weeks long, then 1.5 hours is recommended. The meeting must never go beyond 3 hours.

### 4 Tips for managing Agile meetings

Now that we’ve covered what Agile meetings are and their types, objectives, attendees, and duration. Something still needs to be incorporated into the meetings to manage efficiently. Below are some helpful tips for the effective management of Agile meetings.

#### 1. Always come prepared

Everyone, from the Scrum Master to the development team, must prepare for an agile meeting. By coming prepared, we mean team members are

- Ready to ask the right questions
- Ready to give the proper responses
- Ready to discuss strategy and plan new actions.

To achieve that, the meeting agenda needs to be sent to the team members so they know the goals of the meeting and what they are expected to discuss and have the right answers.

#### 2. Always stay focused

Team members can easily lose focus in Agile meetings. As these meetings are time-boxed, it is imperative that each member of the Agile team focuses on the objective of the meeting and limits their conversations within the scope of the meeting. Extraneous conversations can easily deviate the team from its target objective.

#### 3. Strengthen collaboration

Agile is built on collaboration. **Collaboration** is so important that it is the 1st of the four core values. Agile teams thrive on effective collaboration in all meetings. The agile team needs to communicate and work together to improve efficiency and, ultimately, the quality of the product.  
Everyone on the team must be given an equal chance to speak and share their ideas or provide feedback on specific areas.

#### 4. Take advantage of tools

Meetings notes after **Agile meetings** are the best way to communicate and share important information such as

- New features are to be added in the next sprint.
- Action items
- New ideas that are relevant to the project

Teams should utilize project management software, with a built-in collaboration tool that equips the team with a lot of features for collaboration.

In this post, we discussed four types of Agile meetings and provided a detailed explanation of what they are, their objectives, who attends the meetings, and the duration of the meetings. Further, 4 important tips for managing these meetings are provided. ONES.com is a single source for all your meetings. [**ONES** WiKi](https://ones.com/products/wiki) has templates for sprint planning, review, retrospective, and much more.

_Originally published at_ [_https://blog.ones.com_](https://blog.ones.com/4-tips-for-managing-effective-agile-meetings) _on December 12, 2022._