Why do we hold Sprint Reviews at the CWHC?

Written by:
Damien Joly, PhD
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative

Summary:

A Sprint Review is an event in the Scrum Framework used in Agile software development, where developers and stakeholders meet to view and discuss recent progress towards the product goal.

We hold Sprint Reviews at the CWHC every two weeks to promote transparency, collaboration, and communication within our organization.

What is a Sprint Review?

Before coming to work for the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative (CWHC), I worked for the British Columbia Ministry of Energy, Mines, and Low Carbon Innovation on a software project called “Traction”, as part of the overall “Digital Trust” initiative of the BC Government. I worked with a team of developers that used a process called “Scrum”, which is an Agile approach to software development. Scrum orients around “Sprints” which are blocks of time during which a discrete and planned amount of work is completed.

To illustrate the process, imagine that you work on a team that is creating a time machine like in the all-time great movie, Back to the Future: the DeLorean. Before Agile, you would sit down with the stakeholder and create a specifications document describing all aspects of the car, go away for a long period of time, and then bring back a product that may or may not meet the stakeholder’s needs. This was called “Waterfall” development, and in my opinion, resulted in a lot of software projects that were over budget, late, and didn’t necessarily meet the needs of the stakeholder.

A Scrum team would take a different approach. First, you wouldn’t set out to build the DeLorean straight away. You would work with the stakeholder to understand all the needs of the end product, and create a “Backlog” of functionalities that the DeLorean should have, and then roughly map out the order in which you should tackle these in what’s called a “Product Roadmap“.

Overall, the Scrum process revolves around an iterative series of events. Scrum development is divided into iterative periods of time called “Sprints“, during which you work on items in the Backlog. Sprints are generally less than a month (we use 2 week Sprints). The idea of the Sprint is that you should be able to start and finish a discrete task, i.e., build something that is functional and works.

In this hypothetical example, the first 2-week Sprint might be focussed on building a skateboard, the simplest 4-wheel conveyance. There might be several tasks associated with this “Sprint Goal” of a skateboard: wheels, trucks, board, grip tape, cool stickers etc etc. The DeLorean will ultimately have all sorts of features, like gull-wing doors and the Flux Capacitor etc., but these will be built later.

At the start of each Sprint, you meet with stakeholders to discuss the Backlog and which items will be addressed in the upcoming Sprint, and get their feedback on what is important for them. At the end of the Sprint, you show the stakeholders what you have built to gain feedback and identify any course corrections that might be necessary. You then plan out what you will do for the next two weeks. This meeting is called the “Sprint Review“.

Why the Process Matters

I would argue that the Sprint Review is one of the most important parts of the whole process, as it provides frequent and regular check-ins between the stakeholder and developer. The stakeholder might have issues with say the wheel size, or the length of the board, or perhaps you forgot to put grip tape on … anything is on the table. While you might have planned in the subsequent 2 weeks to next build a scooter, the stakeholder feedback during the Sprint Review might make you reconsider going to that next step, and you then have to add new tasks to the Backlog, or re-order the tasks as something becomes more of a priority. The process repeats itself throughout the project, from the first skateboard to the moment when you successfully reach 88 miles per hour in your new DeLorean.

This process allows the team to be flexible, and adapt quickly in response to stakeholder feedback. To ungracefully mix metaphors, while you may have been on the wrong road, you’re only on the wrong road for a short period of time and the Sprint Review allows you to course correct on the fly. It also allows a great degree of transparency: I’m a big fan of the principle of “no surprises”. Regular Sprint Reviews ensure that not only does everyone know what is being built and what it’ll do, they also allow clients and stakeholders insight into problems, challenges, and barriers that are impeding progress. I believe this builds trust between the developers and stakeholders and this trust is so important to a successful project.

Sprint Reviews at the CWHC

The CWHC is a collaboration of the five veterinary schools in Canada and the BC Government Interministry Wildlife Health Group (About Us – CWHC). As a collaboration, everyone associated with the CWHC officially works for different entities, be it one of the Universities or a government agency, and chooses to devote their time to our CWHC mission and purpose. This model is fantastic in that it allows us to form Canada’s national wildlife health surveillance system in collaboration with our Federal, Provincial, and Territorial partners, all for significantly fewer dollars than other national wildlife disease surveillance systems. However, the dispersed nature does make communication and team cohesiveness a challenge.

In October of 2022, I started in my current and dream role as Chief Executive Officer of the CWHC. When I joined the CWHC, I was immediately confronted with a challenge: “How do you maintain communication and team cohesiveness in an organization spread across thousands of kilometers , 5 time zones, and at least 6 organizations?”

Building Trust through Transparency

While I loved working in an Agile/Scrum environment in my previous role, not all aspects of this approach work well outside software development, so I didn’t bring the whole approach to my role in the CWHC. That said, my experience with Scrum taught me that the approach does a lot to build a collaborative environment, by enforcing some of the key components of trust: high degree of transparency, consistency, and communication (Scrum doesn’t ensure competency, considered a fourth component of trust). I really believe that great relationships are the key to any successful collaborative endeavour, and a great relationship requires trust:

[Adapted from “Vodicka, D. (2006, November). The four elements of trust. Principal Leadership (Middle School Edition), 7(3), 27–30” by adding the green boxes]

When I started in my CEO role, I decided to borrow the concept of the “Sprint Review” from the Scrum method. Almost every two weeks since we’ve held a virtual Sprint Review on Google Meet where I go over what I’ve been up to for the previous two weeks, and my goals for the following two weeks. Anyone associated with the CWHC is welcome to join, ask questions about anything, and provide feedback on what’s been happening.

The Sprint Reviews we hold aren’t true Sprint Reviews: I’m not a software developer, and I’m not building things in my role as CEO. That said, the iterative nature of a Sprint and associated Sprint Reviews forces me to think about my “to do list” in 2 week intervals and set my goals accordingly. Every two weeks I walk through the list with the team, and discuss what I did and didn’t complete and the reasons. This not only brings accountability to my work, it also allows the team insight into short- and medium-term successes and challenges.

They’re pretty informal. I’ve been naming the Sprints after Star Wars planets and species so far: from Alderaan to Yavin 4, and then from Akk Dog to where we are now at Rodian. I’ve even done one in French, relying on the patience and forgiveness of those at the Québec Regional Centre of the CWHC, the Centre québécois sur la santé des animaux sauvages, and I plan on making that a regular event.

A varying number of people show up, and I’ve even had occasions where no-one did. That’s totally okay – I think that means that people in the CWHC know that Sprint Reviews will occur every two weeks and so they’ll always have an opportunity to come and ask questions, discuss issues, and provide feedback. If they don’t come, I interpret that to mean there are no pressing issues that are more important than whatever else is going on in their lives.

That said, when people do show up it’s great. We’ve had really great discussions, and I’ve gained a greater insight into the wildlife health issues facing folks across the country. I think that this two-way flow of information is absolutely necessary, and helps us steer this organization effectively.

This is why we do Sprint Reviews at the CWHC.

Written by:
Damien Joly, PhD
Chief Executive Officer, Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative

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