audit-ceremonies

name	audit-ceremonies
description	Observe a full sprint cycle and name ceremony anti-patterns with evidence — status-theatre standups, secretary Scrum Master, planning-as-task-assignment, retrospectives without action items. Produces an audit with prioritised coaching actions. Use when a team's ceremonies feel hollow or to diagnose ceremony health.
argument-hint	[team name]
user-invocable	true
allowed-tools	Read, Write, Edit, Glob, Grep

Audit Ceremonies

Observe a full sprint cycle for $ARGUMENTS and name ceremony anti-patterns with evidence. This skill diagnoses; the facilitate-* skills fix. For deeper systemic dysfunctions (Zombie Scrum, Dark Scrum), use audit-anti-patterns. Reference: the 2020 Scrum Guide defines each event's purpose, and Scrum.org's anti-pattern catalogues document the failure modes.

Step 1: Observe across a full cycle

Anti-patterns only surface across a cycle, not in a single event. Observe (or read records of) each event: planning, daily scrums, refinement, review, retrospective. Note who runs each event, who talks to whom, and what the event produces. Don't intervene during observation — you're diagnosing, not coaching, yet.

Output: a one-line note per event on who ran it and what it produced.

Step 2: Check each event against its anti-patterns

Event	Anti-pattern	Evidence to look for
Daily Scrum	Status theatre	Each person reports at the coach/PO; questions go round the table toward an authority; no planning happens; blockers named stay blocked
Daily Scrum	Secretary coach	The coach runs the standup; the team waits to be called on; can't run the event without the coach
Sprint Planning	Task-assignment	The PO hands out tasks; developers don't own the forecast; no memorable Sprint Goal
Sprint Planning	No goal	Planning ends with a ticket list nobody can summarise
Sprint Review	Demo theatre	One-way presentation to passive recipients; backlog doesn't change
Refinement	Absent or batched	Items reach planning unrefined; refinement is a dreaded standalone meeting, not continuous
Retrospective	Status theatre	No action items, or items with no owner and no due date
Retrospective	Wheel of Fortune	Jumps from data to action with no insight phase; same items recur

Step 3: Record the good signals too

An audit that only lists failures gives the team nothing to protect. Note what's working, because those are the behaviours to reinforce:

Event	Good coaching signal
Daily Scrum	Developers organise it themselves; the conversation is about the Sprint Goal, not individual tasks; the coach attends but doesn't facilitate
Sprint Planning	Every developer can state the Sprint Goal from memory; the plan is the team's, not the PO's or coach's
Sprint Review	Stakeholders participate; the backlog changes as a result
Retrospective	Action items are owned and routed to the next sprint backlog; formats vary across sprints

The sharpest self-management test: if the coach went on leave, could the team run every event without them? If yes, the coach has built capability. If no, the coach has built a dependency.

Step 4: Distinguish symptom from cause

A secretary-coach standup and a no-goal planning session often share one root: the team has never been coached to self-manage. Group the observed anti-patterns by likely root cause rather than listing them flat. Recurring action items across retros are the strongest signal that the insight phase is being skipped.

Step 5: Prioritise coaching actions

Rank the fixes. Safety and self-management issues come before format polish — a team that can't speak honestly won't benefit from a nicer retro format. Map each priority to the skill that addresses it.

Rules

• Always observe a full cycle before naming anti-patterns. A single bad standup isn't a pattern.
• Cite evidence for every anti-pattern — what was observed, in which event. "Status-theatre standup" is not a finding; "standup on [date]: each developer reported to the PO, three blockers named, none addressed" is.
• Diagnose the system, not individuals. "The standup is a status report" not "Sam dominates the standup." If an individual's behaviour is the issue, raise it privately, not in the audit.
• Don't fix during the audit. Observation and intervention are separate — mixing them contaminates the diagnosis.
• Prioritise self-management and safety over format. Polishing ceremonies on a team that can't self-manage is rearranging deck chairs.

Output Format

---
title: Ceremony Audit — [team]
date: YYYY-MM-DD
author: agile-coach
category: Coaching
---

## Cycle observed
[Sprint / period and which events were observed.]

## Anti-patterns found
| Event | Anti-pattern | Evidence | Likely root cause |
|-------|--------------|----------|-------------------|
| [event] | [pattern] | [what was seen, when] | [root] |

## Root-cause grouping
[Anti-patterns grouped by shared cause.]

## Prioritised coaching actions
1. [Highest priority — fix and skill] — addresses [root cause]
2. [Second]
3. [Third]