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Daily standups
This is a quick opportunity to share what you’re up to, flag any blockers, and ask for help. This keeps everyone in sync and also provides visibility to everyone as to what the team is actively working on.
Since we’re distributed across timezones, we use a daily Slack thread for async updates instead of having a meeting later in the day
Sprint planning
At the start of each sprint, we have a meeting to determine what everyone will be working on for the next two weeks from the backlog
Retrospectives
We continuously deploy our work and continuously improve our process. Retrospectives are an important step in the agile process to determine what works and what doesn’t work. Most importantly, this is a blameless process and faults no one as we seek to improve things for everyone
We hold a formal meeting at the end of each sprint and an quick informal one midway through the sprint as a healthcheck
Sprint review
This is a meeting near the end of each sprint to showcase our work to stakeholders and gather some feedback to make sure business and developers are still in sync
Backlog refinement
Prior to sprint planning, we need to review the backlog to ensure stories are still relevant, give us an idea of what’s coming, and determine the amount of effort stories will take by assigning points to each story will take so we know how much we can assign during a planning session
Throughout this process, we use Slack to continuously communicate and collaborate on what we’re working on. Don’t hesitate to work and discuss in the open so that everyone has an idea of what you’re working on and can also learn from what you’re doing. While communication in channels is encouraged, that also doesn’t mean we expect participation from everyone in every discussion.