7 tips to improve you retrospectives

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Retrospectives are my favorite agile ritual; when done well, they help teams regularly improve and progress toward being a high performing group. Unfortunately for so many teams retrospectives are often deprioritized, a rote ritual done for performative purposes with no real change or team empowerment coming out of them.

Today we’re going to talk about some things you can do to improve your retrospectives, and some things to watch out for.?

Before we look at how to improve your retros, it’s important to level set and discuss the purpose and origins of retrospectives. The Agile Manifesto, written way back in 2001, doesn’t prescribe much in terms of practices or processes - except for this:

This one line, from the 12 principles behind the Agile Manifesto, is the origin and original intent of the retrospectives we see today and there are a couple of elements of it we need to look at.

First, like with much of the Manifesto, the focus is on the team - it is the *team* reflecting on its performance, and the team modifying its behavior based on this reflection. It’s not managers taking the feedback from the retrospection and telling the team how to adjust - the whole intent here is that the team is empowered to make the changes necessary so that they can be more effective and deliver valuable working software.

The other important bit here is the “at regular intervals” language - unlike more traditional end-of-project rituals like post-mortems or lessons learned, this is meant to be an ongoing and regular activity that the team conducts. This provides two benefits - it creates an environment of continuous improvement, and it allows the team to inspect and adapt as the context in which they operate may change.

So in summary, a retrospective is a forum for the team to look back at how they are operating as a team, identify opportunities to improve, and take ownership in fine tuning their ways of working so that they can improve their ability to do their jobs. To be successful, the team needs to be comfortable enough to speak hard truths and discuss problems they are facing, and they need to feel empowered to make the changes necessary to address those problems.?

With that said, let’s talk about ways to make the most of the retrospective time so that all of those statements can be true!

ONE: The Prime Directive

For a retrospective to be effective, it has to be conducted in a psychologically safe environment. Team members need to feel safe speaking up about their observations and concerns without fear of retribution.

Setting the stage for your team’s retrospectives with the Norm Kerth’s Prime Directive can be a great starting point:

“Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.” -Norm Kerth, Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Review

We want the retrospective to be a constructive and productive exercise, so encouraging folks to not finger-point or assume the intention of their teammates is a great start. I usually coach folks to be be more general in their constructive criticism, using “We” and “Our” instead of “I” and “You” so that there is a shared sentiment of collective ownership.?

TWO: No Outsiders

Continuing on the theme of psychological safety, we want to make sure that the environment of the retro itself feels safe to participants. Throughout my career I’ve had more than one executive ask to sit in on a retrospective, to be a “fly on the wall” so that they can see what people are saying.

I always say no. The mere presence of an outsider - whether that’s a stakeholder, the team manager’s manager, or any other third party - can directly influence how open people will be about what is really happening within the team.?

For fully remote and distributed teams I also recommend *not* recording retrospectives for these same reasons; the fear of someone outside of the team watching at a later point will definitely limit what some team members will say. Along these lines, while it can be fine to share the list of team-agreed upon action items after a retrospective never publish the individual responses - especially not if there are names attached to them.

THREE: Limit responses

Limiting the number of responses per participant during the retrospective can be an important element to making that retrospective effective and productive. Here are a few reasons why:

One, it's a great exercise in learning and practicing prioritization. What are the top three things you want to discuss this retro? We usually don't have time in a single meeting to go over every issue that has come up, so encouraging the team to prioritize and pick the most important ones ensures we're making the most of the retro. This learning can also carry over to the day to day work where we can't take on every project or ask made of us and we have to be able to prioritize.?

Second, we want to make sure that everyone on the team has an opportunity to speak. When allowed to raise unlimited issues some folks will dominate the conversation and discourage others from participating. By setting boundaries on the number of responses, we make sure that there is a fair and equitable space for every member of the team.?

Finally, we're working within a time boxed meeting and we want it to be valuable for every person involved. By focusing on the most important items, ensuring every person has an opportunity to talk and doing so in a timely fashion, we can make sure that every retrospective is meaningful and leads to improvement.

FOUR: Encourage experimentation

Once the team has identified areas of improvement within their ways of working, it’s important the we encourage them to come up with *potential* solutions for those problems, solutions that they can own and implement.

When we come to this portion of the retrospective, here’s how i usually frame it:

Okay team, we’ve identified this as an area we want to improve. What is something we can try over the next two weeks to improve it? Remember, nothing we decide here is set in stone - we can try it for a couple of weeks, and if it helps - awesome! We’ll keep doing it! If it doesn’t help, we’ll stop and try something different.

We’re looking for a couple of things here; participation from the team so that they can own the changes, but also a commitment to try something. Too often people may feel afraid to suggest something for fear that they’ll be locked in to that practice or process forever, so it can be very effective to propose the action items as limited time experiments.

As with most things agile, the smaller or the more incremental the better - what are some small tweaks we can do, that are within our power to implement, that will improve this situation?

FIVE: Outcomes over action items

There's a lot of value in coming up with a list of tasks at the end of a retrospective. These could be things that you want to change about the way you work, experiments you want to try, or other adjustments you want to make as a team.

Most guidance on retrospective facilitation will tell you that these action items are super important. But this guidance tends to focus a little too heavily on the action items themselves and checking off whether or not you've completed this list of tasks.

It's important to remember that the action? items are meant to be an *output* of the retrospective and not the *end* result.? What we're really concerned about is the *outcome* of the retrospective.

And that outcome is focusing on improvement as a team. How can we get better as a group and find new and improved ways of working with one another on a day to day basis?

So instead of checking off the list and seeing if you did all of the action items from the previous retrospective, try to ask about the problems that were raised in that retrospective and see if they have gotten better over time

SIX: Time management

While most guidance suggests at least ninety minutes for an effective retrospective, in reality I’ve found most teams willing to spend no more than an hour on it every couple of weeks. Meeting burnout is real, and asking them to participate in any meeting longer than an hour can be a tough sell.

But even if you have the full ninety minutes, time management of the retrospective is crucial if you want positive results.

It can be very easy for a team to go down a rabbit-hole on a particular topic, or for a single person to derail and dominate the conversation. As we talked about in limiting responses, we want to make sure that everyone has a chance to speak but also that we get to all of the relevant parts of a retro.?

I have seen more than one team dig too deep into certain areas and by the end of the meeting there was little or no time to discuss potential solutions. When facilitating a retro, it’s important to make sure that the conversation keeps going at an appropriate pace.?

My general process for running a traditional (What went well, What could have been better, What are we going to do about it) retro is roughly:

• Icebreakers, social chat (5 minutes)
• Participants write their stickies for What went well (3 minutes, timer on screen)
• Participants, one by one, read their stickies (12 minutes)?
• Participants write their stickies for What could have been better (3 minutes, timer on screen)
• Participants, one by one, read their stickies (12 minutes)?
• Group What could have been better column and dot vote (5 minutes)
• Discuss highest voted items and potential action items (20 minutes)

While facilitating, I am constantly checking the clock to see how we’re doing on time, and may adjust my instructions or guidance as needed so that we can be sure to cover the most important bits.?

SEVEN: Mix it up

One of the biggest reasons retrospectives end up feeling stale, rote, or boring is that the team does not vary the format - sometimes ever. While a standard format can be great for consistency purposes and setting expectations within the team, there is a lot of value in mixing up the format used on a periodic or regular basis.

Changing the format, the tool, or even the location of the retrospective if you’re a co-located team can keep the sessions fresh and engaging and reduce the potential pitfalls of boredom and repetition.

There is an added benefit; mixing up the format can force folks to think about things from a different point of view, pulling them from the weeds and encouraging them to examine items from new angles.

There are a plethora of resources out there on fun and exciting retrospective formats. Some favorites I’ve done include using a Jar of Feelings, a non-denominational Retrsopectivus for the Rest of Us during holiday seasons, and using Story Dice to describe the past couple of weeks. Have you seen a great format that you love? Leave a comment below and share!

CONCLUSION

Honestly, I could talk about retrospectives for hours but I hope these 7 tips and tricks will help you make the most out of the retrospectives you are running or participating in. If you have any feedback on this article or its associated video, let me know! I'm always looking to inspect and adapt my own work as well.