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In his book “PMI-ACP and Certified Scrum Professional Exam Prep and Desk Reference,” John Stenbeck has created an “Agile PM Process Grid” which contains 87 processes used in agile project management divided up into 5 process areas and 7 knowledge areas.

I’m now covering all the processes in the first process group called Initiate, and have covered all the processes in that group under the first 6 knowledge areas.   Now I’m moving on to the one process in the seventh and last knowledge, that of Continuous Improvement, called Process 7.1 Define Required Ceremonies.

What do ceremonies have to do with continuous improvement?    These ceremonies referred to are:

• Sprint Planning, which looks forward to the next iteration
• Spring Review/Retrospective, which looks backward upon the previous iteration
• Daily Meeting, which looks at the status of the current iteration

These three ceremonies are formalized in order to engage stakeholders in structured discussions that help clarify and articulate their values and priorities.

By defining these ceremonies, the stage is set for continuous improvement during the course of the project.   But like the “ground rules” of team interactions, the defining of team ceremonies help set expectations and reduce the probability of misunderstandings so that the team can cooperate in producing an actionable, high-value product backlog that is “burned down” or completed incrementally with each iteration.

This covers the last of the processes in the Initiate process group.   The next group of processes is the Plan process group, an introduction to which is contained in the next post.

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