Scrum is all about rhythms. Teams that are successful with Scrum establish a sustainable cadence for collaborating with each other. Each of the sprint ceremonies help us move toward our goal, and remind us what’s coming next.
Scrum is pretty straightforward about how to establish the right rhythms for the team, but organizing your work as a product owner is a little murkier. You know that sprint planning happens every two weeks, but what do you need to do to prepare? Your team does backlog refinement for an hour every week, but how far in advance do you need to start working on stories to make that meeting worthwhile?
In this article, I’ll share the rhythms that have worked well for me as a product owner. The Scrum ceremonies act as a trigger – a reminder that there’s something I need to do. I’ll organize this article by those triggers, and we’ll work our way backward to see what we need to do to prepare.