![]() ![]() We love to make lists, but lists are not Action Plans. Show the team how they did in terms of completing stories, handing off work at integration points, and reducing technical debt to center the conversation. We want to encourage the team to focus on the things that we can control so that we have the greatest positive impact. Answers like, “The coffee in the lunchroom is not good,” doesn’t exactly serve the purpose of the exercise. Simply asking “What didn’t you like?” may be too broad. The secret here is to sneak in some quantitative metrics. After success is recognized, we move on to what didn’t go so well. The positives allow us to realize that we did accomplish something of value for our customers. Heck, they might even feel a bit beat up. It is best to start with the positive as it celebrates success for a team that may have stumbled a bit. One of the best sprint retrospective techniques is using post-its and markers (or an electronic substitute) and asking people to list the best things that occurred during the meeting. Free-form sprint retrospective techniques are wonderful, but a little focus is even better. Trust is at the core of this event and we need to “hear what people are thinking” if we intend to make a difference. This includes the development team, Scrum Master, and Product Owner as well as anyone else involved in designing, building, and testing the product. To further ensure the feeling of responsibility, we need the full Scrum team in attendance at our retrospective. This level of responsibility, investment, and involvement increases the emotional connection that each person feels for the work. Invite everyone.Īgile practices focus on giving teams and individuals ownership of their work and accountability to the team and organization. Here are a few points to keep in mind as you plan a retrospective exercise: 1. Because this is a time for reflection, it truly requires the awareness and attention of everyone involved to be successful. The entire team should care about the results of the retrospective. “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. What didn’t work well this sprint that we should stop doing?.What worked well this sprint that we wish to continue doing?.In simple terms, the retrospective aims to review: Yet, at its core, it provides a carefully monitored timebox, a means for teams to examine what’s happening, analyze the way they work, identify ways to improve, and make plans to implement improvements. The sprint retrospective is one of the most important, and often least appreciated practices in the Scrum framework. We must stop the madness of checking items off our list and throwing ourselves headlong into the next project, and think for a moment about how we can plan and steer our teams in a smarter way! We repeatedly bump our heads because instead of inspecting and adapting we repeat our mistakes over and over hoping for a different result. Without retrospectives, we become much like Edward Bear. In the preface of his book Project Retrospectives, Norm Kerth, the founder of the modern-day movement on retrospectives, offers us a humorous analogy from the classic Winnie the Pooh on the purpose of the key end-of-sprint event.Īvoid Agile team Edward Bear “syndrome” with a focus on great sprint retrospective techniques. The team should reflect on how to drive more end-user value and adjust its behavior accordingly.Īccording to the Scrum Guide, a retrospective meeting is “an opportunity for the Scrum Team to inspect itself and create a plan for improvements to be enacted during the next sprint.” In simpler terms, retrospectives are the chance for the team to voice what worked well, what didn’t, and how to make positives changes during the next sprint. In a scaled Agile approach, which guides both IT and non-IT teams in scaling Lean and Agile practices, we must go a step further to include the purpose of retrospectives for the program and portfolio teams. As an accomplished strategist in IT Portfolio Management, systems design and implementation, product development, and business communication, John has utilized his skills across numerous industries and Fortune 500 companies including NBCUniversal, Scholastic Inc., Direct Brands, Merrill Lynch, iCentral Corp, Alliance Consulting, OpenMetrik Inc., Cablevision, Alyn Hospital, ORC, EMI and ADP Brokerage Services. John’s opinions and innovative contributions to the IT field have been recognized and published in CIO Magazine and ComputerWorld. ![]() Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by John Blanco. John Blanco is an experienced IT management professional with a proven track record in aligning IT strategies to core business objectives and delivering innovative solutions across an array of business disciplines (and is certainly experienced in sprint retrospective techniques!). ![]()
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