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I work for a digital agency as an agile project manager. We have recently adopted Scrum.

We are looking at aligning all of our project work for multiple clients into all encompassing 2 week Sprints rather than have a 2 week Sprint per project.

My question is how best can I manage the Sprint Review ceremony specifically demonstrating the work that we've completed to all of our clients in a single meeting? I don't want our clients to be hanging around waiting for us to finish with one client before moving on to the next.

Thoughts?

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    This is an anti-pattern, and smacks of an X/Y problem. Please give some additional context explaining the process drivers for doing this, as well as what existing problem you're trying to solve and why you think the team-per-project approach isn't right for you. Furthermore, consider that if you're going to break the Scrum process for "reasons," then Scrum may not be the right framework for you.
    – Todd A. Jacobs ♦
    Commented Apr 25, 2017 at 16:47
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    It's not uncommon to use Scrum to do work for multiple clients, but there's usually some overarching theme to a Sprint. The work is somewhat related in nature and some kind of delivery is made at the end. Can you elaborate on why you are using Scrum instead of other tools or frameworks, such as Kanban?
    – Thomas Owens ♦
    Commented Apr 25, 2017 at 16:49

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It is not uncommon to have multiple stakeholders for a sprint. This is true even when your output is highly focused. There are generally two ways I coach teams to handle this.

1- Science Fair format: Have the team (or teams) set up in a large room with multiple stations. Stakeholders can then wander around to the stations they care about and see specific demos of specific features. This lets the Stakeholder decide what they want to see.

This is often used when the Stakeholders are interested in the whole product, only don't have time to go to multiple or extended demos.

2- Multi-stage demo: The first demo is focused on immediate stakeholders. The Product Owner then schedules follow up demos with other stakeholder groups.

This is typically used when the stakeholders are in many time zones or have highly divergent schedules.

Based on your description, I'd advocate the Science Fair format. While your different clients are naturally going to be focused on "What did you do for me", odds are they have some interest in what else you do as it may be something they'd like as well. "Oh, that's cool, can we get something like that?" Could lead to more paid work for your teams.

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My first response is to ask why. Why do you want to squish work for multiple different clients into a single Sprint? Do you not have enough work per-client? Consider 1-week Sprints instead. Is it a company mandate, with no valid reasoning? Consider challenging it.

Or is it because the work for those multiple clients naturally lends itself to being combined into a single Sprint goal?

If that is true, then simply focus on the Sprint goal during the Sprint Review. Show off how your Team successfully moved forward by completing the goal, rather than focusing on each individual feature completed for each individual client. This will likely involve clients viewing work that might not be relevant to them, but the flipside of this is doing so may give them ideas for new feature requests or the like.

If it is not true that the work you intend to fit into a Sprint can be coherently mapped to a single, simple, understandable and reachable Sprint goal, then strongly consider not doing so.

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    The simple answer is deadlines and building trust. We have deadlines that we need to hit as clients are planning launches etc and we need to be seen to continue working on projects and delivering software after each sprint to build trust with the clients. 1 week sprints could be an option but I've personally found they're too frequent and velocity suffers.
    – Dan Kastelik
    Commented Apr 25, 2017 at 16:41
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    @DanKastelik You might be asking too much of agile/scrum. Neither of these guarantee more or less than other approaches for reaching deadlines or building trust. Indeed, poorly implemented agile can also work against you: 1 week sprints could go terribly wrong, as could constantly missed sprints in terms of client trust. Agile isn't a silver bullet; you still need to plan carefully and manage your clients and team, which can be done using any methodology. Like everyone else here, I agree: carefully consider why you're using scrum, because I don't think your rationale stacks up.
    – dKen
    Commented Apr 26, 2017 at 3:37
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You can create a very organized agenda and invite them in a sequence. But then again, why not let them all see all delivered content, maybe one client is interested in something requested by another, and they want it too.

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