The drive to inspect and adapt is one of the most important aspects of agile software development. A great way to bake this approach into your process is by having regular retrospective meetings that engage and challenge the team to solve their own problems and make things better. However, these meetings can be difficult to run well and drive improvement. In fact, many teams sleepwalk through sessions, treating them as a box-ticking exercise that signals the end of the iteration.
Maybe its time we tried a bit harder to make retrospective meetings work?
In this talk, Chris explains how to put together an awesome sprint retrospective. He discusses the following:
* Why retrospectives can be unpopular
* Structuring the meeting to succeed
* Setting the right tone
* Activities to gather data
* Activities to generate insights
* How to decide what to do
* How to manage retrospective actions
4. What is a Retrospective Meeting?
“Special meeting that takes place at the end of a
period of work – usually an iteration or software
release.
In a retrospective, a team steps back, examines
the way they work, analyses and identifies ways
they can improve”
Esther Derby
5. Inspect and adapt
We will always
know more
than we know
here
Retrospective
Retrospective
Retrospective
Retrospective
Retrospective
16. How do you run an effective and
engaging Sprint Retrospective?
17. References
Agile Retrospectives: Making Good
Teams Great (Derby and Larsen)
Gamestorming: A Playbook for
Innovators, Rulebreakers, and
Changemakers (Gray, Brown and
Macanufo)
18. How do you run an effective and
engaging Sprint Retrospective?
• Prepare well
• Deliberately facilitate
• Keep to Retrospective Framework
• Vary retrospective activities
• Track actions
29. Set the stage
Agree a ‘Goldilocks’ goal
Agree mind-set
Hear everyone’s voice
30. Set the stage: Check-in
Everyone answers a question
in one or two words:
“How was the sprint for you?”
“What is on your mind right now?”
“What are your hopes for
this retrospective?”
31. In one or two words…
How has Agile Cambridge 2013 been
for you?
32. Set the stage: Other activities
• Focus On/Focus Off
• Explorer, Shopper, Vacationer,
Prisoner
35. Gather data: Team Poll
Measure Satisfaction with Teamwork, Quality,
Engineering, ???
36. Gather data: Pair Interviews
• Pose a question like “What were the high and
low points of this sprint?”
• Pair-up, each person to interview the other
• Not a conversation; encourage interviewees to
keep to the role
• Report back
37. Gather data: Other activities
• Timeline
• Short Subjects
– Mad/Sad/Glad
– Stop/Start/Continue
• Learning Matrix
• Like to Like card game
42. Generate insights:
Challenge Cards
Two Teams
• Challenge Team brainstorms
potential problems
• Solution Team brainstorms
features and strengths of the
team
43. Generate insights:
Challenge Cards
To Play:
• Challenge Team plays a card, solution team
picks a card that addresses the challenge
• Winner decided and points awarded
• If there is no solution, team designs a new
solution card together
45. • Each person has paper divided into ~4 sections
• Idea added in 1st section
• Paper passed to next person who builds on idea
Generate insights: Brainwriting
46. Generate insights:
Mission Impossible
• Take an existing challenge/goal and change a
fundamental aspect that makes it seem
impossible
– “How do we remove all our technical debt… in a day?”
– “How do we add a feature… without writing code?”
• Brainstorm
• Ask “Which of these ideas would be worth
actually trying?”
48. Generate Insights: Other activities
• Five Whys
• Force Field Analysis
• Flip it
• De Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats
• Anti-problem
• Speedboat
• Pre-Mortem
50. Decide what to do
Move toward conclusions
Focus on improvement
Identify 2-5 actions
51. Decide what to do: Prioritize
Activities to prioritize:
• Dot voting
• £100 Test
• Absolute order
52. Decide what to do: Create actions
Actions are return on investment
Ask:
• “Can ‘we’ achieve this?”
• “What does success look like?”
• “What’s the first step?”
• “Who is going to own this?”
53. Decide what to do: Create actions
Not sure exactly what to tackle?
Arrange an experiment
54. Decide what to do: Create actions
Team seems unsure or noncommittal?
Measure with ‘Five-Fingered Consensus’
60. How do you run an effective and
engaging Sprint Retrospective?
• Prepare well
• Deliberately facilitate
• Keep to Retrospective Framework
• Vary retrospective activities
• Track actions
61. References
Agile Retrospectives: Making Good
Teams Great (Derby and Larsen)
Gamestorming: A Playbook for
Innovators, Rulebreakers, and
Changemakers (Gray, Brown and
Macanufo)
Agile Retrospective Resource Wiki
@cj_smithy