As a team balances adopting Scrum with the pressures to deliver value, it’s possible for them to lose sight of some of the basics that make Scrum work. This checklist can be used periodically by the Scrum Master or by the team (e.g. in a retrospective) to assess whether some of the key things are in place:

Does the team have a PO and a Scrum Master that are not the same person?	Yes / No
For the current sprint, was there a sprint planning meeting in which the whole team participated and which resulted in a plan that the team voted to be at least 3 out of 5?	Yes / No
Is there a sprint backlog and release burnup that is visible during the daily	Yes / No
Is the size of each of the stories in the sprint less than ½ of the total committed points for the sprint?	Yes / No
Is the team size 7 +/- 2 and have the team members been on the team for the last 2 sprints?	Yes / No
Did the team conduct a sprint demo following their last sprint with working & tested software that generated feedback from the stakeholders?	Yes / No
Did the team conduct a sprint retrospective following their last sprint that resulted in specific improvement proposals?	Yes / No
Was at least one action implemented from the previous sprint’s retrospective?	Yes / No
Does the team have a clear Definition of Done that is satisfied before bringing the story into a sprint?	Yes / No
Does the product owner have a product backlog in which a sprint’s worth of stories are ready for consumption by the team?	Yes / No
Did the team and product owner have a backlog refinement meeting at least once during the last sprint?	Yes / No
Did the product owner come prepared to the last backlog refinement meeting with backlog items to discuss?	Yes / No

There may be valid reasons why some of these aren’t done. This checklist can serve as a periodic reminder of some of the mechanisms key to Scrum.