Our last sprint was good. But not what I know the team is capable of doing.  During the sprint demo we found that they didn’t have a whole lot to demo.  I took a look at the sprint backlog and found that there were a lot of stories that were not demonstrable. They were things that were hangovers from the teams history as a RUP shop.  They were writing things like, “Do Design for Web Service”, as a story.  That just isn’t demonstrable.

Here is what you can do to solve this problem. Ask a really simple question during your sprint planning ask:

How will this be demonstrated?

Sounds really simple but if you ask you will find that it give a lot of  “a-ha” moments. Then you need to turn to the Product Owner and ask them:

Is that acceptable to you?

Those two questions will have much clearer delivery from your team and acceptance from your Product Owner.