Scrum master facilitation guide

Time-box

Up to 8 hours for a 4-week sprint (proportionally less for shorter sprints)

Agenda

• • Confirm the sprint goal — one sentence the team rallies around.
• • Walk the top of the backlog. Clarify acceptance criteria, not implementation.
• • Forecast: the team pulls work, the scrum master never pushes.
• • Break stories into tasks only if it actually helps the team — many mature teams skip this.

Anti-patterns

• − PO presenting items the team has never seen (refinement was skipped).
• − Scrum master assigning work or estimating on behalf of developers.
• − No sprint goal — just a list of tickets.

Time-box

15 minutes, every day, same time, same place

Agenda

• • Inspect progress against the sprint goal — not a status report to the manager.
• • Surface blockers. Park the solving for after the meeting.
• • If the plan needs to change, change it. The daily is for replanning the next 24 hours.

Anti-patterns

• − Round-robin status to the scrum master (the developers own this meeting).
• − Solving problems in the meeting while six people watch.
• − Skipping it 'because everything is on the board'.

Time-box

Up to 4 hours for a 4-week sprint

Agenda

• • Show working software, not slides. If it isn't done, it isn't shown.
• • Invite real stakeholders — the people whose decisions will change based on what they see.
• • Capture feedback as backlog candidates, not commitments.
• • Update the product backlog and roadmap together, in the open.

Anti-patterns

• − Treating it as a sign-off gate. Acceptance happens during the sprint, not at the end.
• − Demo theater — scripted clicks that hide rough edges. Show the rough edges.
• − No stakeholders present, just the dev team showing each other.

Time-box

Up to 3 hours for a 4-week sprint

Agenda

• • Set the stage — re-read the prime directive, recap last retro's actions.
• • Gather data — one of the formats from our retrospective formats guide.
• • Generate insights — group, vote, discuss the top 2–3 themes only.
• • Decide what to do — at most three actions, named owners, due dates.
• • Close — one round of appreciation. End on time, every time.

Anti-patterns

• − Same format every sprint — same answers every sprint.
• − Twelve actions nobody owns. Three is plenty.
• − Retro absorbing demo or planning failures. Fix the upstream meeting instead.

Time-box

Roughly 10% of the team's capacity, ongoing — not a single ceremony

Agenda

• • PO walks upcoming items. Team asks clarifying questions.
• • Add acceptance criteria together. The PO writes — the team contributes.
• • Estimate (or right-size) just enough items to cover 1.5–2 sprints.
• • Split anything larger than half a sprint before it enters planning.

Anti-patterns

• − Refining six sprints ahead — the world will change first.
• − Estimating work the team will never do — wasted effort.
• − Treating it as optional. Planning quality is bounded by refinement quality.