Agile Retrospective Techniques: Finding the Right Fit for Your Team

The goal of a retrospective is straightforward: make time regularly to reflect as a team on how you can improve your work. However, these meetings can often lack strong leadership, and a culture of skipping them may develop.

"The purpose of the Sprint Retrospective is to plan ways to increase quality and effectiveness."--The Scrum Guide        

As a Scrum Master, it's important to continually experiment with different techniques for conducting retrospective meetings.

Advantages of trying out new retrospective techniques for your team:

1.?? Get better, more actionable feedback?from your team more often.

2.?? Gain a deeper understanding of how your team feels about their work?and design solutions that answer their biggest concerns, resulting in smoother collaboration in the future.

3.?? Achieve concrete goals?and get to the root cause of problems your team faces.

4.?? Define a structure?that keeps your next agile retrospective on track and effective.

5.?? Motivate team members to attend the event?instead of having to coerce them into joining.

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There are various approaches to conducting retrospectives that can keep your team engaged throughout the process.

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1.????? Start Stop Continue retrospective

Start Stop Continue?is the simplest exercise for creating?continuous improvement?for your team.

• What should we start doing?

Each person writes out new activities or issues your team should tackle doing in the next project or cycle.

• What should we stop doing?

Each participant identifies activities from your current process or cycle that your team should not carry forward.

• What should we continue doing?

Everyone adds activities your team is doing that should carry over into the next cycle or project.

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2.????? What Went Well Retrospective

With just three prompts, it offers a great way of streamlining your retrospective meeting, boosting team member self-esteem, and diagnosing pain points.

• What went well?

This is the bucket for everything that helped you achieve your sprint outcome.

• What didn’t go well

This is the bucket for activities that didn’t work for the sprint outcome.?

• What can we improve?

This is the bucket for improvements or action items to deliver better in next sprint

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3.????? Mad Sad Glad retrospective

The "Mad Sad Glad" retrospective technique places more emphasis on looking at the emotions of the individual team members.

• What made you mad?

What drove you crazy? Did you hit any roadblocks that tanked productivity? What parts were a huge hassle? These are the things you didn’t like, even if they seemed to work.

• What made you sad?

What experiences disappointed you? What do you wish could be improved? Things in this column aren’t necessarily bad, but they’re not productive either.

• What made you glad?

What parts of this process or project did you enjoy? What were the successes and wins that put a smile on your face? These are the things that ?make you think, “I love the way this went.”

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4.????? Original 4 retrospective

With four classic prompts, facilitators will spark discussion and inspire agile and scrum teams to look more deeply at how they work together.?

• Wins

Where did your team excel this past sprint? What are you proud of??

• Improvements

What didn’t go so well this time? What could you, your teammates, or your scrum master do differently moving forward?

• Learnings

What did you and your team learn from certain actions you took, or choices you made??

• Questions

What’s still a puzzle for your team? What are you still wondering about??

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5.????? 4Ls retrospective

For retrospective, 4Ls is an excellent way to gather information on a team process or agile project. It allows for more neutral and far-reaching feedback.

• Liked

Things you liked, enjoyed or appreciated. These can be things about the process or the project, or even a person’s particular successes or achievements.

• Lacked

What was missing in the?last?iteration?or sprint? What are the things that could have improved the process? These can be anything from missing equipment to lack of knowledge.

• Learned

What did you learn during this?iteration?or sprint? Again, these can be things individuals learned, or things the team learned as a whole.?

• Longed for

If Lacked looks toward the past, Longed For looks toward the future and adds an?emotional perspective. What would have made this process smoother? What was the thing that had you thinking, “If only we had…”??

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Tips to get most out of your retrospective meetings

1.????? Start with a ICEBREAKER: Starting with a fun and lighthearted?icebreaker game?gives the team a chance to loosen up and bond before they get into the serious discussions.

2.????? End with PRAISE & KUDOS: Leave five minutes at the end for peer-to-peer kudos even for little things?like giving helpful feedback or kudos for helping other team member out.

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