A typical 2 week Sprint calendar

Helping you plan the events with your scrum team

Stephen Waring · Follow

Published in Agile Batman
7 min read · Feb 14, 2021

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When shall we schedule our Scrum events?

W hen you’re getting started with Scrum, one of the first things you are going
to want to do (other than understand the 4 values of the Agile Manifesto,
the 12 principles behind it and the 5 Scrum core values 😉 ) is to set up your Scrum
events in your team calendar.

So today, let’s explore when you could run them in a typical 2 week Sprint, and the
reasons behind that.

Recap of Scrum events

Before we get into when to put the events into a Sprint, here’s a recap of the 4 Scrum
events that the Sprint encompasses:

Daily Scrum every day (15 mins max)

Sprint Review once per sprint (2 hours max)

Sprint Retrospective once per sprint (2 hours max)

Sprint Planning once per sprint (4 hours max)

And optionally…

Product Backlog Refinement as a group (as required)

I find it useful to get some time together as a team to perform group Product
Backlog Refinement — but in practice, this is an activity that also happens
throughout the Sprint.

How I run a 2 week sprint

On a normal day, we are in the office between 9am and 5:30pm. Obviously during
the COVID-19 pandemic, this has changed somewhat! But in general, we stick to the
same times working remotely.

Some people get “in” earlier than this, and some people stay later than this.
However, all the teams are around between our core hours of 10am to 4pm; this
ensures we can plan our meetings effectively.

The following diagram is an overview on how we schedule our Sprint events,

sometimes we stray a little bit from this if we need to, but we always do it for the
right reasons. We are not constantly changing or extending them on a regular basis
— we are building a rhythm.
 Events of a typical 2 week Sprint

This is the exact setup I use for one of my Scrum teams.

Summary of events in a two week sprint cycle

The top half of the diagram shows the first week of the sprint, and the bottom half
shows the second week of the sprint.
As you can see, my teams’ two week sprints start on a Monday afternoon, and finish
on a Monday morning two weeks later (so they span 3 separate calendar weeks in
reality).

This is deliberate and we’ll get to why in a bit.

Before that though, here’s a bit more detail about each event on the calendar above:

We hold a Daily Scrum at the same time, same place, every single day except the
day we have Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective and Sprint Planning — there are
enough meetings on that day already, and more importantly, we don’t intend to
do any other sprint work on that day anyway. This event is therefore not needed.

We hold Sprint Planning immediately after Sprint Retrospective (with a small

break so that we can have a rest) on Monday afternoon. We have the highest
energy levels on a Monday, so we do most of the mentally taxing things on that
day. Our Sprint Planning sessions sometimes spill over into Tuesday AM. This is
quite rare, but when it happens it also gives us time to “sleep on it” if we have to.
In this scenario, the 1st Daily Scrum of the Sprint is cancelled on the Tuesday, as
we are planning together anyway — we don’t see any additional benefit of also
having a Daily Scrum.

Product Backlog Refinement 1 (as a group) is held every Thursday. The first of
these sessions in a sprint allows us to ask any questions. If they can be answered
there and then, it’s great. If not, we’ve got the rest of the sprint to figure it out.
We also spend time in smaller groups refining items throughout the sprint. The
product backlog refinement meetings are where we estimate as a group.

Product Backlog Refinement 2 (as a group) happens in the second week of a

sprint. We answer any questions raised in the first refinement meeting, and we
make sure we are as ready as we can be for Sprint Planning only a few days away
now.

Sprint Review happens first thing on a Monday morning. We spend up to 2

hours (as a team) preparing for this on the Friday before. Effectively our sprint
ends last thing on Friday, and we can all go home having worked really hard and
hopefully having achieved the Sprint Goal. Sometimes it’s a bit more ad-hoc than
that; the planning for demos should be a natural end to a sprint, rather than a
big event. We try and make Sprint Review as fun and laid back as possible so that
 people aren’t afraid to give feedback. We start our working week with Sprint
Review.

After Sprint Review (and usually lunch), we head to Sprint Retrospective and
discuss as a team how we can improve at least one thing in the next sprint. That
“thing” goes directly on the sprint backlog for the very next sprint.

Top tips for planning your Scrum events

1. Stick to your time boxes
No-one likes their events running over time, and this includes the Scrum events. So
be respectful of other people’s time and stick to your time boxes. The last 10 minutes
of every event should be wrapping up. The reason we have a time box is to make our
meetings efficient. If you start off with Scrum and find you are running out of time
in all of your events, consider just ending bang on time to help teach everyone that
time is important. Talk about your time boxes in your next team Sprint
Retrospective.
2. Leave some space between events
None of my events exceed 1.5 hours of continuous work in a row; this is deliberate.
People need a break to perform their best, so build it in. I always allow space for
people to have a break between meetings.

3. Regular times
Having the same events, at the same time every week helps get people into a state of
flow. People know when they’ll be interrupted, so they’ll build a routine around it.
It’s also much easier booking things like meeting rooms if you need them the same
time every single week.

4. Other meetings are OK, just be careful

The core Scrum events are there to ensure we have a regular time and place to
inspect and adapt. That doesn’t mean you can’t have other meetings, but you should
be conscious that you might be excluding people; and that might reduce
transparency. Not everyone will have a common understanding if they are not
invited.

So for every other meeting you have, you should also ask yourself this question:

Could this extra meeting be better covered off in one of the existing Scrum events?

5. The order of the Scrum events important

 You must start with Sprint Planning so that you know what goal you are setting
out to achieve in the Sprint.

Your Daily Scrum is likely to be next — you can discuss any progress towards
your Sprint Goal

As your Sprint comes to a close, you’ll be preparing and performing the Sprint
Review with your stakeholders to gather that all important feedback

Finally we end the Sprint with Sprint Retrospective — inspecting and adapting
the team for optimum performance

And remember…

Backlog Refinement is happening throughout the Sprint — it’s not just a meeting.

📝 Take Notes
As a Scrum Master, I often find it useful to take notes about any observations I’ve
made during each scrum event. I then take these notes to Sprint Retrospective to
inspect with the team and see what adaptations we can make to improve our
effectiveness and quality in the future.

Each event has it’s own purpose, time box, attendees and anti-patterns. As an
experienced Scrum Master I know what to look out for, but if you are just starting
out, or just like your notes to be ordered, I’ve created a journal you can buy online
here:

Sprint Journal - 2 Week

Buy Sprint Journal - 2 Week by Waring, Stephen (ISBN: ) from
Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery…
amzn.eu

Summary
I hope this information helps you plan your sprint events with your team.

Sometimes the days/times have changed, or events have moved around a bit; but
we’ve settled on this and everyone seems pretty happy with it. That doesn’t mean we
won’t change it in the future. The world is changing all the time and we might find
better ways of exploring the Scrum events. If I do, I’m sure to let you know right
here!

If you’re new to Scrum and want to learn lots more, head over to
thescrummaster.co.uk and you’ll find all sorts of courses and practice tests to
further your knowledge!

And if you buy it, I hope you find the Sprint Journal useful.

Scrum Sprint Scrum Master Agile Meetings

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Written by Stephen Waring

589 Followers · Editor for Agile Batman

I’m an energetic and enthusiastic Agile coach who loves music, cars, computers and helping other people
succeed!

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