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 it’s time we tried a bit harder to make sprint retrospective meetings work? In this workshop, Chris explained how to put together an awesome sprint retrospective. Attendees tried novel activities that can be used to gather information and challenge team members to consider problems from a new angle.

1. The Art of the Retrospective
GE Cambridge
Thursday, 20 February 2014
Chris Smith and Paul Stephenson

2. The Art of the Retrospective
What can go wrong with sprint
retrospectives and how to fix them
GE Cambridge
Thursday, 20 February 2014
Chris Smith and Paul Stephenson

4. Chris Smith
Paul Stephenson
Project Manager
Project Manager

5. Introductions

6. 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

7. Inspect and adapt: What we develop
Release
Release
Release
Release
We will always
know more
than we know
here
Release

8. Inspect and adapt: How we work
Retrospective
Retrospective
Retrospective
Retrospective
Retrospective
We will always know more
about how we work together
on the project than we know
here

9. Retrospectives can be perfunctory

10. Retrospectives can be unpopular

11. Retrospectives can be unpopular
My team are literally allergic to the word
‘Retrospective’

12. Retrospectives can be unpopular
My team talk to each other and we fix things
when they come up (you idiot)

13. Retrospectives can be unpopular
My team/project is special because [reason], so
we don’t do retrospectives

14. So…
“Let’s not bother”
or worse
“Let’s continue ticking the box”

15. Retrospectives can be transformative
Inspecting and
adapting through
retrospectives

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 activities
Create good actions

19. Prepare Well
• Invest time
• Decide focus &
agenda
• Gather people,
help, materials,
snacks

20. Deliberately
Facilitate
• Clear & confident
• Aware
• Don’t contribute
(too much)

21. Keep to the Retrospective Framework

22. Vary retrospective activities
‘Heinz 57 Varieties’ by Pat C. Klein

23. Set the stage

24. Choose a ‘Goldilocks’ goal
Too closed
Too open
Just right

25. Find ways to improve our
physical work environment?

26. Check-in
Everyone answers a question in one or two
words:
How was the sprint for you?
What is on your mind right now?

27. Check-in
How is your physical office
environment?

28. Check-in

29. Set the stage: Other activities
• Focus On/Focus Off
• Explorer, Shopper, Vacationer,
Prisoner
• Desert Island

30. Gather data

31. Pair Interviews
• Pair-up, each person to interview the other
• Not a conversation; encourage interviewees to
keep to the role
• Pose a question like “What were the high and
low points of this sprint?”
• Report back

32. Pair Interviews
• Interview about satisfaction with physical
work environment this year
• Interviewer, ask:
– when the person felt most satisfied?
– why was is satisfying?
– when the person felt least satisfied?
– why was is dissatisfying?
• Three minutes to interview, then we swap

33. Other activities to gather data
• Team Poll
• Timeline
• Short Subjects
– Mad/Sad/Glad
– Stop/Start/Continue
• Learning Matrix
• Like to Like card game

34. Generate insights

35. 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
any code?”

36. Mission Impossible
How do we turn your office
into the perfect environment…
in 24 hours?

37. Other activities to generate insights
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Fishbone diagram
Force Field Analysis
Challenge Cards
De Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats
Flip it
Anti-problem
Pre-Mortem

38. Decide what to do

39. Brain-writing
• Each person has paper divided into ~4 sections
• Idea added in 1st section
• Paper passed to next person who builds on idea

40. Brain-writing
Given what you have heard and seen, what should
you do?

41. Prioritize what to do
Activities to prioritize:
• Dot voting
• £100 Test
• Absolute order
• Personal commitment

42. Action creation tips
Not sure exactly what to tackle?
Arrange an experiment

43. Action creation tips
Not sure how to make a mind-set or direction
change actually happen?
Introduce an artefact or activity

44. Action creation tips
Team seems unsure or noncommittal?
Measure with ‘Five-Fingered Consensus’

45. Close the retrospective

46. Close the retrospective:
Feedback wall

47. Structuring a retrospective

48. How do you run an effective and
engaging Sprint Retrospective?
•
•
•
•
•
Prepare well
Deliberately facilitate
Keep to Retrospective Framework
Vary activities
Create good actions

49. References
Agile Retrospectives: Making Good
Teams Great (Derby and Larsen)
Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators,
Rulebreakers, and Changemakers (Gray,
Brown and Macanufo)
http://www.plans-for-retrospectives.com/
http://retrospectivewiki.org/

50. Questions?
?
@cj_smithy
chris.smith@red-gate.com