Events Conference Session
CAAC 11: Virginia Commonwealth Agency Agile Conference #11
This event took place on Friday, October 27, 2023, so registration is closed. See current training or get in touch about booking Michael.
CAAC 11 Conference Theme
The Events We Use & Engaging The Team
This session is a moderated discussion with various agency personnel about the Scrum Events — and the non-events — that are used within the Virginia Commonwealth Agencies across Virginia.
Session two is presented by an expert to help you set up the environment — online or in-person — to help engage all members of your team.
Questions?
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Resources from this session
Get tips about Implementing Scrum.
Subscribe to my weekly Saturday morning Scrum Cartoons.
Your Scrum (or Agile) Journey because context matters!
The Scrum Pillars.
The Interactive Scrum Guide (InteractiveScrumGuide.com).
The Scrum Guide Audio Book (scrumguide.mvizdos.com).
Scrum Artifacts (and commitments).
Dark Scrum (anti-patterns and recommended solutions from my mentor and colleague Ron Jeffries).
Team Building / Onboarding New Team Members.
Scrum Outside of Software (www.ScrumInSchool.org).
Commonwealth Agency Agile Conference · CAAC 11
Scrum Events and Agile with Introverts
Michael spoke Moderated session 1, Events in Scrum · Volunteer planning team
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Welcome: three years of CAAC 0:00:03
Stephen Manley (Virginia State Police)
CAAC 11 falls on the conference's third anniversary; the first was October 29, 2020. The host opens with holiday traditions: every family runs the same events differently, which sets up the first session.
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Events in Scrum 0:08:27
Michael Vizdos guest, Barbara Phillips (Virginia State Police), Julie Wilson (Virginia State Police), Stephen Manley (Virginia State Police), David Crighton (Virginia State Police)
Michael moderates a relay through the five Scrum events, with a different practitioner on each, then three practices the Scrum Guide does not define: Sprint Zero, product backlog refinement and a roadmap review.
- Each Scrum event is a formal chance to inspect and adapt. The Sprint contains all the others.
- The Daily Scrum is for the team, not a status report for managers. Take follow-ups to a "16th minute" so everyone else can leave.
- A Sprint Review is a working session for stakeholder feedback, not a show-and-tell. A rehearsal the day before helps.
- Every retrospective should end with an improvement the team commits to. Keep it to the team, and the Product Owner is part of the team.
- A Sprint Zero gives a new team about a week to set up. Don't let it turn into Sprint 0.5, 0.29 and so on.
- Refine with the INVEST checklist, and use refinement to clear out backlog items that have sat untouched for months.
- VSP teams review their roadmap every one to three months with four questions: did we get done what we expected, what needs adding, what needs removing, is the order still right.
In the Scrum Guide: Scrum Events · The Sprint · Daily Scrum · Sprint Review · Sprint Retrospective
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Team Building: Making the Room Safe for Both Introverts and Extroverts 1:16:48
John Atkins (Experis Consulting) guest
A self-described extreme extrovert on how agile teams can work for introverts as well: introverts recharge alone and think before speaking, while many meeting habits reward whoever talks first.
- Send agendas ahead and keep events in a consistent format, so people can prepare.
- Give a few minutes of silent writing before a discussion, and let silence sit instead of filling it.
- Ask each person for their view so no one has to interrupt to be heard, and follow up one-on-one with anyone who stayed quiet.
- Collaboration should be voluntary. Use pair programming and swarming with care.
- Keep teams together and bring the work to the team; familiar teammates are easier to speak up with.
- Avoid stacking three meetings back to back.
In the Scrum Guide: The Scrum Team
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Conference retrospective 2:00:52
Barbara Phillips (Virginia State Police)
Attendees praise the relay format and the introverts session, and suggest ways to get more people talking at a virtual conference.
- Ideas for next time: polls during sessions, telling attendees up front that their input will be asked for, asking invitees why they attend, and Disciplined Agile as a future topic.
About these pages: curated and reviewed by Michael Vizdos, on the volunteer CAAC planning team since CAAC 4 and a speaker at CAAC 5, 10, 11, 17 and 18. Summaries and takeaways are drafted with AI (Claude) from the recording's captions and reviewed by Michael Vizdos before publishing (how I use AI). This is not the official conference site; the Virginia State Police hosts CAAC (vsp.virginia.gov/caac). Last reviewed October 20, 2026.