When doing any development process it’s always good to keep ourself aware of the things you intend to do. A cheat sheet or checklist is an easy way to keep your team on track and doing the right things. For me a checklist is not to be followed to the letter, it’s just a good way to start thinking about your process.

There are some scrum checklists out there: Scrum Rules Cheat Sheet, Scrum checklist. I would like to add another list. My list is not so much about the practices of scrum, but focusses more on the goals of scrum (such as communication, trust, teamwork). The list contains questions you can ask the team. Try to answer all questions within short time (say half an hour) by looking at the work space and talking to the team. If you need more time or cannot answer all questions, you might have some things to discuss during the next retrospective. I hope it will get you and your team thinking about areas of improvement.

Scrum Questions

Try to answer the following questions by looking at the whiteboards:
- When will the iteration be finished, how’s it going?
- If it’s not finished in time, what are the impediments blocking the team?
- When will the next milestone/release be finished?

Try to answer the following question by looking at the product backlog?
- What would be the next item to pick if the current iteration is done?
- Where are the features/tasks that don’t have a priority (yet)?
- Which stakeholders would understand the items on the backlog, which wouldn’t?

Try to answer the following question by looking at the team at work?
- Is the energy level high?
- Which people belong to the same team?

Try to have the following questions answered by talking to the team.
- Who are the stakeholders for the project?
- When was the last communication with a big group or all of the stakeholders on the project status, less than a month?
- When was the last time stakeholders gave feedback on work that was delivered, less than a month?

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