We’ve all had the experience of being in a group where everything is flowing really well, people are aligned, and everyone’s energy is high. Then one person says or does something that seems to pop the bubble, and the flow of good ideas stops. The typical response in these situations is a kind of uncomfortable silence followed by a disinterested push to get back to the topic at hand. Everyone in the room can sense that something is different but few are aware of what happened, and almost nobody is aware of the actual phenomenon at work.

The most accurate way to measure the success of any Agile team, is by validating the actual Business Value delivered with the delivery of working software, and measuring performance based on your Key Performance Metrics to see whether your product is performing to expectations. This is something we call a Long , or Customer Feedback Loop.

This next series of posts will talk about what  we mean by “Value,” and how we know whether we are delivering it.

If you ask anyone you work with if they think they are delivering value to the business or to their product, they will most likely say “yes” (if they say “no” you probably have an interesting conversation ahead, stick with it!). If you were to ask them what they thought delivering value meant, they would probably tell you about the many activities they perform throughout the day, but how do we know whether they are valuable?

In order for the team to review the work done in the previous Sprint/Iteration, a Sprint/Iteration Review is held. Note that this is not the occasion for the team to present the work to the Product Owner.

This Review meeting should be scheduled for the first available time slot after the end of the previous Sprint/Iteration and last 30 minutes for a single team, or up to 30 minutes per team for multiple teams in a single program. It is common for teams to schedule the first 30 minutes of their Sprint Planning meeting to review the previous Sprint.