Executive summary: Every event in Scrum has a goal in mind. If you achieve that goal, then the event becomes an investment. If you don’t, it’s waste.

1. Sprint
   1. Goal: Create an increment of value end-to-end, enabling the collection of valuable customer/stakeholder feedback
   2. Output: Product Increment
   3. Outcome: Customer/stakeholder understanding increases every single Sprint, maximizing long-term value throughput

2. (Backlog) Refinement: (not an official Scrum Event, can be done in various ways)
   1. Goal: Align the team’s understanding of where the value lies
   2. Output: Ready Product Backlog
      1. On the top, 2–3 Sprints worth of Ready Product Backlog Items (clear and aligned understanding of the problem, small, estimated)
      2. Priorities aligned, along with the reasoning behind
      3. Long-term context aligned: Product Goals, strategy to get there, whys behind
   3. Outcome: Team’s aligned on what really matters, thus is able to make decisions and self-manage

3. Sprint Planning 1
   1. Goal: Choose the focus of this Sprint: What problems will we/the new Product Increment solve? When will we call this Sprint a success?
   2. Output: Sprint Backlog, Sprint Goal
   3. Outcome: Clarity, transparency, focus

4. Daily Scrum & Sprint Planning 2
   1. Goal: Rolled planning of the team: How will we achieve the Sprint Goal? How will we get the Sprint Backlog Items Done?
   2. Output: Plan/course of action defined for the next 1–2 days. Usually, this plan is only verbally agreed, no need to write down
   3. Outcome: Everyone leaves the Daily knowing who’s working on what with whom, and roughly how. Maximized chance of achieving the Sprint Goal and delivering the Sprint Backlog Items

5. Sprint Review
   1. Goal: Review the new Product Increment, i.e. the team’s solution to the problems represented by the Sprint Backlog Items. What was Done? What’s still outstanding? Where we are in the bigger context of things?
   2. Output: Updated Product Backlog
   3. Outcome: Aligned understanding of the status, the context, and the delivered value. Feedback loop of Sprint Planning closed

6. Demo (not an official Scrum Event, can be done in various ways)
   1. Goal: Elicit customer/stakeholder feedback
   2. Output: Updated Product Backlog
   3. Outcome: Improved understanding of what really matters and where the value lies

7. Sprint Retrospective
   1. Goal: Stop and reflect on our strengths and weaknesses, with the aim to improve ourselves a tiny bit every single Sprint
   2. Output: The next Sprint’s focus on improvement (“Kaizen”), and actions/experiments defined around it
   3. Outcome: Continuous improvement, that eventually leads to creating and sustaining a great agile team