Did you take a while to get off the ground with the events and conventions you organized? Or when you showed the project ready to the client, did he/she ask for changes that involved all the planning?
This is a very common commercial pain in the events business. The best thing to do in this case is to change the methodology used in planning the event, and the scrum methodology is ideal for that.
Unlike the traditional methodology, the waterfall model, the scrum aims at the organizer to develop the event project in a fast, efficient, and productive way.
Although it seems like something very difficult and the terms are complicated, it is simpler than you think.
In this article, you will see how you can use Scrum to plan and organize events and conventions of your company or major ones.
Before that, let’s take a closer look at some of the best features to your project management: GitScrum’s Boards, Gantt Chart, and Sprints will help you organize every task you want to create events and conventions at the right time! Get our lifetime deal and be part of Gitscrum team!
Steps to Organize an Event or Convention
Define the event’s purpose
Organizing your event well is the key to achieving good results. Therefore, the first step is to put your goals on paper. That is, clearly define what and for what reason you will do it.
It is important to make it clear that holding any event does not only involve hiring suppliers and promoting them. On the contrary, the planning phase is vital and ensures that everything goes according to plan.
The knowledge and skills you have are enough to draw an effective strategy based on your goals. Some common goals are: present a product to the market; promote sales on a commemorative date; improve customer relationships.
Assemble the team responsible for the organization
There are two basic mistakes when running an event: doing it all yourself and letting everyone do it all. In other words, for everything to come out in the best possible way, it is necessary to assemble a team responsible for the organization.
There are people who have the abilities to negotiate with suppliers, produce presentations that engage, resourcefulness in handling equipment and tranquility, and organization to deal with finances.
So, get to know your group well and learn to share with them the responsibilities and ideas that will make your event a success.
Establish the event schedule
Establish the date, the start time, the people who will speak, and the time available for each of them.
Having this well-defined schedule in hand you can schedule better and prevent some execution errors from happening.
The idea of this step is to allow positive results to be achieved more naturally and away from unnecessary risks.
Develop the dissemination strategy
Another very important step in the elaboration of the dissemination strategy. In fact, this is when the good marketer must show his full potential.
Depending on your objective and target audience, it is possible to explore different communication channels. Develop posters and specific campaigns for social media that are able to generate expectations and present the benefits of participating in the event.
It is necessary to be clear and accurate when publicizing your action, as this will attract people and will reward all their efforts. Can you imagine wasting all that time and money preparing the event and not reaching a good audience?
Evaluate the results
It should be noted that this is part of professional improvement and ensures that upcoming events are even more productive.
Knowing and understanding failures is a way to evolve and not commit them again. Therefore, never close any business strategy without carefully analyzing everything positive and negative that happened.
Try to list the mistakes, the responsible ones and, of course, the reasons why that happened. In the next action, start by reviewing this report and looking at ways to prevent them from happening again.
Learn to work with checklists
It is a tool widely used in corporate daily life and can be used well in organizing events.
In general, there are great benefits to betting on this tool, from the greater predictability of results to the reduction of basic errors. So, follow a specific checklist for this situation:
- Define the event name;
- Set the probable date;
- Choose the right place;
- Calculate the estimated audience;
- Establish the strategy objectives;
- List the activities to be developed;
- Establish those responsible for each activity;
Use the Scrum event to organize your events and conventions
If you need or have to set up an event or a convention at a certain time, you might find Scrum events as a potential tool to make your team closer and get to know how everything is going, daily or weekly.
Here are some of the Scrum events that will help your company to finally organize events and not put in trouble:
The Planning Meeting
A planning meeting is the Scrum event where the work to be done in the Sprint is planned, based on the collaboration of the entire Scrum team.
For a one-month sprint, this event lasts a maximum of eight hours, and for smaller sprints, its duration must also be shorter.
The Scrum Master guides this meeting, ensuring that the event takes place and that everyone understands its purpose. The Scrum Team and the Product Owner also participate, as well as, if necessary, other guests with some relationship to the project.
The Product Owner presents the Product Backlog and the team debates on top of it to assemble the Sprint Backlog items. Choose a good goal, described in a clear and coherent way.
The Sprint Backlog is a shorter and more specific list than the Product Backlog. It contains the goals only for the Sprint in question.
The Scrum Master is responsible for making the entire process flow and work. In addition, it seeks to find the obstacles that are hindering the execution of the project, in order to overcome them.
The Daily Meeting
The Daily Scrum is a 15-minute maximum event that usually takes place at the start of the day.
In that so, the development team analyzes the progress of the Sprint and creates a plan for the next 24 hours, keeping the members of the Scrum Team aligned with the objectives of the Sprint Backlog.
During this meeting, the focus is to review the work done since the last Daily Scrum and plan what should be done until the next one, as well as inspecting the obstacles found in the path of achieving the Sprint goal.
The Scrum Master guarantees this meeting, but only the development team is responsible for conducting it. The Product Owner can only participate as a listener.
The team should hold the meeting, preferably, always at the same time and place, thus avoiding unforeseen events and interference.
The Sprint Review
The Sprint Review is the event held at the end of the Sprint, with the objective of inspecting the improvement and adapting the Product Backlog, if necessary.
At the review meeting, the Scrum team must report what has been developed, tested, or improved in this Sprint and stakeholders discuss it. This event has a maximum duration of 4 hours for a one-month Sprint and the Scrum Master ensures that the event runs according to expected standards.
The Sprint Retrospective
The Sprint Retrospective is an event to inspect the Scrum Team by itself and seeks to create an improvement plan for the next Sprint.
Continuous improvement well sums up the core concept of this meeting and the foundation of the Scrum team.
As great as the quality of the Scrum team, its members must always look for points where they can improve, either in themselves or in the Sprint process.
The performance is between the end of one Sprint and the beginning of another. For a one-month sprint, it must have a maximum duration of three hours.
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