Conducting 'meaningful' retrospection meetings

CONDUCTING MEANINGFUL

RETROS!

Rahul Sudame

CSM, SAFe SPC

AGENDA

Ways of conducting retro

Inputs on making retros vibrant

Retros in scaled environment

Processing retro feedback

Tips for effective retros

SOUNDS FAMILIAR?

Umm, I don’t have

any new point to

add

Lets skip retro

this Sprint

What

happened to

last Sprint’s

feedback?

It’s a waste of

time

I don’t agree with your

point - Manager

IT’S A NOT A CASUAL THING

Retro

Inspect & Adapt

Cont. Improvem

ent

Whole team

learning

Catalyst for change

Generate action

STEPS OF RETRO

QUALITATIVE & QUANTITATIVE

Quantitative

• Did we meet our ‘Sprint Goal’ (Yes/No)?

• Metrics review (Burndown, Velocity, Status of

Items raised in last retro, Defect count etc.)

Qualitative

• 3 Column:

• What worked

• What didn’t

• Items to try

• Team working agreement

INNOVATION GAMES FOR RETRO

DYSFUNCTIONS ASSESSMENT

JOHARI WINDOW

ESVP

Team to share their attitude towards Retro:

• Explorer: Eager to discover new ideas

• Shopper: Will be happy to go home with one useful idea

• Vacationer: Not interested, but happy to be away from the daily

grind

• Prisoner: Forced to attend retro

OTHER WAYS OF CONDUCTING RETRO

• Individual Feedback (Individual notes)

• Appreciation (Did someone help you?)

• Conceptual (One word)

• Rating (of Sprint on scale of 1 to 5)

• Smiley for the Sprint ( , , )

• Dot voting for most impacting item

• Events on Scrum timeline

• Lego Game / Collaboration activities

• Focus on / off chart (E.g. Focus on Dialogue than Debate)

DISTRIBUTED RETRO

SCALED / RETRO OF RETRO

CIRCLES AND SOUP

Classify Feedback items –

• Caused by Agile,

Exposed by Agile, No

related

• People / Process /

Technology

• Team’s control on the

issue & the action

RETRO PERFORMANCE CURVE

TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE RETROS

Keep retros vibrant

Encourage (as well as control ) participation

Rotate the facilitator role

Invite external person to facilitate

Achievable actions and owners in backlog

SUMMARY

Agile Retrospection meeting needs to take

seriously, not an optional activity

Continuous improvement should be the goal

ScrumMaster should facilitate healthy discussion

Make retros exciting

Engage team members from different locations &

scrum teams at program level

Rahul Sudame