Scrum Master - Do you schedule the 3 meetings?

The Scrum Master plays a key role in the Scrum framework by scheduling and facilitating 3 crucial meetings: the Sprint Review, Retrospective, and Planning. These meetings are essential for reviewing progress, reflecting on performance, and planning future work, helping the team stay aligned and continuously improve.

The Scrum Master should estimate how much time each meeting will require, then schedule a single calendar appointment to cater to the 3 meetings. When scheduling the calendar appointment, keep in mind the following:

Ideally, each of the 3 meetings should be time-boxed to an hour for every week of their associated Sprint
This timeboxing does not mean the whole time will be taken up, just that you should not let the time for each meeting be exceeded
With the Product Owner's help, the Scrum Team will need some time to update the Product Backlog after the Retrospective and before the Planning meeting
People need breaks
The Sprint officially finishes at the end of the Sprint Retrospective meeting. The Sprint Planning meeting marks the beginning of the next Sprint
These meetings do not necessarily have to be held on a Friday or Monday. You can have a Sprint starting/ending on any day of the week
- In fact, mid-week meetings are recommended so that the likelihood of it occurring on a public holiday long weekend is minimized
Since these meetings will occur every Sprint - set a recurrence on the calendar appointment (every 1, 2, 3, or 4 weeks) so that people have the time blocked out well in advance

Tip: It can be helpful to finish the Sprint Planning meeting with the first Daily Scrum.

Schedule the meeting and invite the Scrum Team and any interested stakeholders.


Required Attendees:	Scrum Team
Optional Attendees:	Interested Stakeholders
Recurrence:	Every {{ NUMBER OF WEEKS }} weeks
Subject:	{{ PROJECT NAME }} – Sprint Review, Retro and Planning

Hi Team,

Product Owner: {{ PRODUCT OWNER }}
Scrum Master: {{ SCRUM MASTER }}
Sprint Length: {{ NUMBER OF WEEKS }} weeks

This is a calendar appointment to hold the following 3 Scrum meetings:

Sprint Review Meeting

We will go through the user stories that have been completed and demonstrate them.
See rule What happens at a Sprint Review Meeting?

Sprint Retrospective Meeting

Sprint closed and new Sprint starts.
We ask for feedback of the previous Sprint so that we can ‘Inspect and Adapt’.
See rule What happens at a Sprint Retrospective Meeting?

Sprint Planning Meeting

We go through the backlog (aka to-do list), get more information, estimate and then prioritize.
We then breakdown to tasks and commit to what we believe we can deliver for the next Sprint.
See the rule What happens at a Sprint Planning Meeting?

Regards, {{ SCRUM MASTER }}

Figure: Good example - Copy this appointment template and send to the Scrum Team