Retrospectives are one of the most important agile ceremonies, where teams reflect on their work, celebrate successes, identify challenges, and plan improvements. However, retrospectives can also become boring, repetitive, or ineffective if they are not well-designed and facilitated. How do you make retrospectives more productive and engaging for your team? Here are some tips to help you.
Before you start a retrospective, you should have a clear goal in mind. What do you want to achieve from this session? What are the main topics or themes you want to discuss? How will you measure the outcomes and follow up on the action items? Having a clear goal will help you focus the conversation, prioritize the issues, and avoid distractions.
There are many different formats and techniques for retrospectives, such as the starfish, the sailboat, the 4Ls, or the KALM. Depending on your goal, your team size, your context, and your preferences, you should choose a format that suits your needs and objectives. You can also mix and match different formats, or create your own. The key is to make sure that the format allows everyone to share their feedback, insights, and ideas in a constructive and respectful way.
Within the Sprint event known as the retrospective, the entire SCRUM team should be participating and without the SCRUM practitioner or master, dominating the interaction. Instead the SCRUM practitioner or master should be facilitating the core values of the SCRUM framework within agile theory of; focus, respect, openness, commitment & courage.
Once you have chosen a format, you should prepare the materials you need for the retrospective. This could include a virtual or physical board, sticky notes, cards, markers, timers, or any other tools you need. You should also prepare some questions or prompts to guide the discussion and elicit responses from the participants. For example, you could ask them to write down what they liked, learned, lacked, or longed for in the last sprint.
As a facilitator, your role is to create a safe and positive space for the team to share their thoughts and feelings, without judgment or criticism. You should also encourage participation, clarify points, summarize ideas, and resolve conflicts. You should not dominate the conversation, impose your opinions, or ignore feedback. You should also keep track of the time, and make sure that the discussion stays on topic and on goal.
Sprint retrospectives scope in on some of the principles of the concept called Lean from Six Sigma. One of the elements guiding the Sprint retrospective interaction is about finding ways to reduce waste, optimize processes, and enhance the build quality of the software/data product.
Learn to rotate the facilitator role as well. Individuals should get chance to become facilitators as well, not just the scrum master.
The ultimate goal of a retrospective is to generate action items that will help the team improve their performance and satisfaction in the next sprint. Therefore, you should make sure that the team agrees on some concrete, specific, and realistic actions that they can implement and monitor. You should also assign owners and deadlines for each action item, and document them in a visible and accessible place. You should also review the action items in the next retrospective, and celebrate the progress and achievements.
One approach to generating action items that is widely accepted is voting. Most virtual retro tools facilitate this. The idea is simple. Collate the feedback, turn it into action items, and ask the team to vote for action items that should be prioritized. Once all members have voted, collate the results, and declare the priority order for action items.
Retrospectives are not a one-time event, but a continuous process of learning and improvement. Therefore, you should experiment with different formats, techniques, and questions, and see what works best for your team. You should also ask for feedback from the participants, and see how they feel about the retrospectives. You should also measure the impact of the action items, and see if they lead to positive changes. By experimenting and improving, you can make retrospectives more productive and enjoyable for everyone.
Don't forget to celebrate your achievements. Most teams focus only on lacked & longed for areas. It is equally important to celebrate improvements from previous retrospectives and other achievements.