Agile Retrospectives: Agile has
different frameworks, methodologies and practices under its umbrella. Out of
which Retrospection is a key practice for team improvement with respect to
people, process and product.
WHAT is a Retrospective meeting?
•
Last
activity in the sprint. Ideal duration for the retrospective meeting would be 3
Hours for 1 month iteration/sprint.
• A retrospective is a team activity, where
team members meet (preferred face to face) to understand their current
process, discuss how it can be improved, and generate action
items that can be acted on or before the next retrospective.
•
Frequent
opportunity for team to inspect self and search for improvements, review and
reflect
WHO would be part
of it?
•
Development
Team, Scrum Master and Product Owner
•
Strictly
no stakeholders/managers
WHY Retrospection?
• Improving process, How do we get better?
• Learning from past mistakes
• Celebrating accomplishments
• Getting your team on the same page
• To create a safe environment where team
members can speak up and share their thoughts
• To take inclusive decisions
• Review Definition of Done (DoD)
• Improving your work environment
• Making good teams great
HOW to do a Retrospective meeting?
In the book
“Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great” written by Esther derby and Diana Larsen,
authors suggest a
flexible framework to improve retrospectives
• Set the stage.
• Gather data.
• Generate insights.
• Decide what to do.
• Close the retrospective.
Set the stage:
• Facilitator establishes the focus
for this retrospective
• Share the plan for the meeting
• Establish or re-purpose working
agreements
• Get every voice in the room
Gather Data:
• Create a shared pool of data
• Ground the retrospective in facts,
not opinion
• Consider objective and subjective
experience
Generate Insights:
• Understand systemic influences &
root causes
• Observe patterns
• Move beyond habitual thinking
• Build shared awareness
• See system effects
Decide What to Do:
• Move from discussion to action
• Resolve on one or two actions or
experiments
• Focus on what the team can
accomplish
• Ask what the team has energy for,
not what is “most important”
Close the retrospective:
• Reiterate actions and follow-up
• Appreciate contributions
• Identify ways to make the next
retrospective better
Retrospective meeting - Challenges:
· Facilitator speaking more compared
to the participants (Facilitation skill to be improved).
· Facilitator not being judgmental,
opinionated.
· Creating psychologically safe
environment for all the team members to speak up.
· Discussions based on facts than
assumptions.
· Empower the team and take out
tensions if any.
· Getting team members active
participation/involvement for team improvement.
· Making retrospectives fun and
interesting.
· Facilitating retrospection by
considering all personas, context of the team.
· Coming up with meaningful action
items.
· Enabling team members to volunteer
for owning the action items.
· Team members blaming other team
members.
· Aligning the discussions with
business interest.
Different Retrospective Techniques:
Facilitator
should use different retrospective techniques to keep retrospectives fun,
interesting and meaningful. There are many retrospectives available, let’s
discuss some of the techniques we have used with our teams.
Star Fish/Wheel Retrospection
• Start Doing
• Stop Doing
• Keep Doing
• Do Less
• Do More
Well, not Well, Improvements
• Hero- Keep Doing
• Hero-ine: New Experiments
• Comedian: Fun/Joy
• Villain: Which stops you to continue
SCV Retrospection
• The Supporter
• The Critic
• The Visionary
Sail Boat/Speed Boat Retrospection
•
WINDS:
things that propel us
•
ANCHOR:
things that are holding back
•
ICEBERG:
Things to look out for (RISKS)
•
LIGHT:
Improvements/Focus areas
Focus Retrospection
Like, Dislike, Focus on Quality,
Focus on Requirements
CAR Retrospection
LIGHT: Focus Area
Brakes: Stopping us
Wheels: Helping us/Keep Doing
Smoke: Avoid/Stop doing
Like|Dislike, Challenges|Improvements
4Ls Technique (Liked, Learned, Lacked and
Longed for)
Impediments (Team and Organization Level)
Starbursting
STEP #1 –Starbursting
• Variant of brainstorming,
starbursting; While brainstorming churns out answers, starburstingis about
coming up with questions.
• ‘5Ws+1H’ –Who, When, Where,
Why, What, How –one question per point. Then, get
participants to write as many questions as they can think of for each category,
and resist answering them at this stage.
STEP #2 –Three Questions
• Review the questions together and
pick the three most strategic questions to answer –questions whose answers are
going to be absolutely key to solving the challenge. This round can be
immensely powerful as it drives deep focus and alignment.
STEP #3 –Full Circle
• Divide the team into three smaller
groups where each will tackle one of the three strategic questions. To give
everyone a chance to tackle each question, rotate each group to the next
question after every twenty minutes or so, until all the groups have answered
all three questions.
Football
retrospection
Key players
Supporters
Distractors
Goals
Scored
Goals Given
Cricket Retrospection
Boundaries
Pitch
Fielders
Pavilion
Cheer
Leaders
CYNEFIN Retrospection
I Loved
I Liked
I Don’t
Like
Please Stop
I didn’t
Understand
Six Thinking hats
retrospection
Blue-Process
White-Facts
Red-Feelings
Green-Creativity
Yellow-Benefits
Black-Cautions
FLAP Retrospection
F-Future
Direction
L-Lessons
Learned
A-Accomplishments
P-Problem
Areas
Retrospection-Focus on Scrum ceremonies
Backlog Refinement
Sprint Planning
Daily Scrum
Sprint Review
Sprint Retrospection
Change | Implement
3 things to Change
3 things to Implement
Start, Stop and Improve
Mad, Sad and Glad
Open space Retrospection
• Agenda is left to team members (It
can be improvement or Focus areas or anything which is of concern)
• Whatever discussion happens is the
only thing that could have
• When it’s over it’s over
Key Questions Rétrospective Technique
• Our Biggest Constraint is
• One thing I want to discuss in this
retrospective is
• One thing I am finding difficult is
• One thing I don’t understand is
• So far I have learned that
• If I could change one thing right
now, it would be…
• We would collaborate better if we…
• One difference between this and the
best team I have worked in is…
• How can we shorten our feedback
loops?
• Which of the company values are we
following or not following?
These are
some of the retrospective techniques, we have tried with teams working with.
Thank you for taking time to read my blog. Please feel free to share your
retrospective experience in comments and let the community know if you have got
some innovative techniques to facilitate retrospectives.
References:
• “Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams
Great” by Esther derby and Diana Larsen
• Nomad8 Blog
