Stop Having Sucky Sprint Reviews: A Simple Sprint Review Agenda

Make Every Sprint Review a Collaborative and Insightful Experience

Sprint Reviews often feel like a drag.
Stakeholders are disengaged. The team gets defensive. And instead of learning and improving, it’s the same old loop.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

With the right agenda, your Sprint Reviews can be energizing, focused, and deeply useful.

Here’s how to run one that actually works.

Sprint Review Agenda

📌 Want a visual? Download the Sprint Review Agenda Graphic or explore all the Sprint Event Agendas in one place.

Attendees

• Relevant Stakeholders

• Product Owner

• Developers

• Scrum Master

Purpose and Agreements

Scrum Master: Kick off by explaining the purpose and setting working agreements.
Clarify that the Sprint Review is for product transparency and adaptation, not judging the team.

Product Goal

Product Owner: Review the Product Goal and context:

• Strategy and vision

• Customer needs

• Business outcomes

• Roadmap alignment

Use resources like the Next Right Solution and Vision Statement Templates to shape this part.

Sprint Goal

Product Owner: Share the Sprint Goal and the intended value. Focus on the impact.

Not "how many items we got done," but "what value we aimed to deliver."

"Decrease the steps required to share on social media."

This is an example of a desired outcome statement—a format we use in customer discovery to focus on value, not tasks. It makes an excellent Sprint Goal because it's clear, measurable, and tied directly to user experience.

Learn more about desired outcomes

Product Demonstration: Show, Don’t Just Tell

Developers: Demo the completed increments. Let stakeholders experience the real product. Connect it to:

• Sprint Goal

• Product Goal

• User feedback or empirical data (if available)

Feedback and Advice

Scrum Master facilitates: Stakeholders share feedback, not to critique but to improve the product.
Use tools like The Advice Game for structured conversations and to get feedback in a more effective way.

Update Product Backlog

Scrum Team: Capture insights and turn them into backlog updates.
Identify next steps, needed research, and clarify priorities.
The Insights Game helps here.

Why This Agenda Works

The Right People in the Room

You need decision-makers and doers.
Not just bodies. That means relevant stakeholders, not just "anyone available."

Setting the Tone

Purpose and agreements build psychological safety.
People speak up more when the tone is right.

Zooming Out with the Product Goal

Reminds everyone why we’re building.
Helps align decisions to the bigger picture.

Zooming In with the Sprint Goal

Gives the team and stakeholders a shared lens to inspect what was built.

Hands-On Demonstration

Forget slide decks. Real interaction builds trust.
Stakeholders can ask better questions when they see the product in action.

Listening and Learning

Feedback is not about performance. It’s about improvement.
This shift changes the dynamic entirely.

Action from Insight

Don’t let feedback collect dust.
Turn it into updates right away.

Shared Ownership

Who owns the Sprint Review?

The whole Scrum Team.

Think potluck:

• Scrum Master sets the table.

• Product Owner brings direction.

• Developers serve what they created.

This shared approach makes the session collaborative and rich.

Sprint Review Example: FitTrack App

Team: Tech Innovators
Product: FitTrack, a fitness app

Attendees:

• Stakeholders: Marketing, Customer Support, a health club client

• PO: Alex

• Devs: Priya, Jamal, Maria, Taylor

• SM: Jamie

Purpose & Agreements:

Jamie explains the intent of the Sprint Review: to make work transparent, gather meaningful feedback, and adapt based on what’s learned.
Jamie reminds the group that this session is about the product, not performance reviews or blame.

Product Goal:

Alex shares the broader Product Goal using a Pixar Pitch:
"Once upon a time, fitness enthusiasts struggled to share their workout progress with friends. Every day, they manually updated social media, which was time-consuming and frustrating. One day, we created FitTrack, an app that automates this process. Because of that, users could share progress with fewer steps and more consistency, engaging more with their fitness goals. Until finally, sharing workout achievements became part of the routine—effortless, motivating, and fun."

Want to try the Pixar Pitch and other vision formats?
Explore our Product Vision Templates.

Sprint Goal:

"Decrease the steps required to share on social media."

This is an example of a desired outcome statement—a format we use in customer discovery to focus on value, not tasks. It makes an excellent Sprint Goal because it's clear, measurable, and tied directly to user experience.

Learn more about desired outcomes and how to map them.

Demo:

The Developers walk through the new social sharing feature.
They demonstrate how the process went from five taps to just two, removing friction for the user.
They present data from early testing showing a 20% increase in usage of the share feature and an uptick in user retention on days when sharing occurred.
They tie this improvement back to the Sprint Goal and its connection to the broader Product Goal.

Feedback:

Marketing suggests adding a feature to track post performance, like views or likes, to better understand engagement impact.
The team uses The Advice Game format to ensure the feedback is heard, explored, and clarified.

Product Backlog Update:

The team adds a new Product Backlog Item for the tracking feature.
They also note differing feedback on the new dropdown interaction and decide to gather more user testing data before acting.
Using The Insights Game, they clarify which actions to take next and where more exploration is needed.

Want Better Sprint Reviews?

Looking for a downloadable version of this and other Sprint event guides?

Get the full set of Sprint Event Agendas.

We cover this in our Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) course—along with tools like The Advice Game and The Insights Game to turn feedback into fuel.

Learn more and join the next CSM class

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