In my trainings I usually explain the Sprint Review and the Sprint Retrospective as rearview mirrors of a moving car, both allow you to inspect what you are doing, and adapt when necessary. When we look in the right-hand side - the driver's - we are only concerned with driving, we see the road to where we are, and everything we did during that sprint. When we look in the passenger mirror we see the same road, but we also see the human interaction. The one behind is the same road, but they are two complementary views.
The Sprint review is for the team to review the work that has been done, usually the sprint review is held by the team with the presence of the Product Owner and the stakeholders. During this meeting the team demonstrates the deliverables of the period. The team will check each delivery against the Done Done Definition (O.D.) and Acceptance Criteria for each story.
During this meeting it is advisable and extremely productive if the future users of that project are present, this will help the team to know and understand if what is being done is consistent with what is expected or not.
Sprint Reviews are time-boxed rituals, this means in other words that these meetings are expected to last a certain amount of time: around one hour for each week of a sprint, giving up to 4 hours for a month-long sprint.
A valuable tip during sprint reviews is to have an Agenda for those who will participate, this usually uses the following meeting agenda:
Introduction
Welcome to Stakeholders
Indicate which features/deliverables will be discussed
Presentation of the deliverables;
Feedback capture
Presentation of the product backlog to the stakeholders;
Final considerations.
A very common mistake is to hear from the team that "it's done, just one small detail is missing", this mistake is usually caused by the team not checking if the stories are matching the definition of achievement and the acceptance criteria. This also occurs because the team is afraid to say that they could not complete a certain activity on time, and this last behavior is something to be discussed during the restrospective meeting.
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