How to conduct effective Sprint Reviews

Thinking out loud on how to conduct an effective sprint review. The points below are written keeping project teams in mind.

Structuring the Sprint Review

• Set an objective for the Sprint review (i.e What do you want to achieve out of the meeting?)
• Start with your sprint goal (if you don't have one, spend a few minutes in sprint planning to set one). Share a subjective assessment on how the team fared against the sprint goal
• Outline how the progress on each story (of the sprint) lead towards the eventual sprint goal

Conducting the Sprint review

• Make sure the logistics are in place (Phone, webex, sametime etc) before the meeting
• Organize the sprint review around demo of working-software (though no doubt, but very effective)
• The Project team should drive the meeting (i.e make sure you are sharing your screen, you are showing the features and answering queries)
• Pause at appropriate time to encourage discussion on the value being delivered

Avoidances (if you do any of the below mentioned, you are wasting time)

• Reading stories from the backlog
• Focusing too much on the story points (vis-a-vis actual value being delivered)
• Treating sprint review as just a progress update

Are your project sprint reviews effective? Think again, and please feel free to add your perspective.