Scrum 411: Getting the Most from the Retrospective

Synopsis

This article is intended to help scrum teams get the most from the Sprint Retrospective ceremony. The scrum guide lays out the guidelines for the sprint retrospective in just 267 words. This demonstrates that the principles are simple. Volumes have been written about the practical application of those principles. Just like scrum itself, the retrospective is simple to understand yet difficult to master, especially in the real world of product development and delivery. I offer this perspective based upon many years of trial and error and continuous improvement. I hope it helps teams understand the importance of the retro and gives some new ideas on how to get past some of the difficulties teams often experience.

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Engagement

I’m not sure exactly why this quote resonates when I think about the retrospective, but it may have something to do with teams resisting introspection:

"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." -Saul Bellow

I have found the retro to be one ceremony the newly formed scrum team is quickly willing to forgo when the schedule is tight and there is a lot to do – which is basically every sprint. Even more mature teams in mature agile organizations are prone to this resistance to some degree, although they are also likely to insist that the retro is reconvened if it has been shelved for any period of time. The nature of the exercise can be taxing. That is why a great scrum master (SM) is going to work very hard to ensure the team is setup for success. As difficult as it can be to get started, it is amazing to see the reactions of team members after they have come full circle in the process and come away with insight into problems and viable plans to overcome and improve.

Unless team members have come from backgrounds where sharing criticism and honestly attacking problems is the norm, teams are usually ill-equipped and uneducated on how to approach this without wrecking relationships and destroying team bonds. Although the guide mentions the scrum master participates as a peer team member from the [perspective of] accountability over the scrum process, the reality of the situation is that all of the other team members have very specific technical roles to fulfill, and unless one of them steps up to help the team with learning and understanding effective methods for participating, they look to the SM to take charge. This makes sense from a balance of work perspective too. The SM often will do non-technical tasks for the team so that they can focus on what they know best. Theorists sometimes argue this point, but I have yet to see a team that does not welcome the SM becoming the subject matter expert for leading and teaching skills for retrospectives.

It helps engagement when all team members, including the product owner (PO) are on-board and willing to work hard to get past some of the difficulties and discomfort that comes when getting started. It is important too that the team member’s managers and directors support the process. Too many times I’ve seen them reinforce the team’s resistance by doubting the value or making offhand comments about wasting time not coding or engaging in specific development activities. 

The guide does not specifically mention stakeholder involvement in the retrospective. I have found that the team will be more likely to open up if there are not others present. A PO may want to invite stakeholders from time to time for various reasons. In that case, I have found it to be useful to plan meeting activities to help include those stakeholders unless the POs intentions were to have them observe the team in normal process. The PO, SM, and development team should all be aware and discuss the presence of anyone besides the core team at their retros. In my opinion and experience it is usually best for those who were not part of the sprint work to be silent observers, or not present at all.

Other common impediments to engagement are:

• Lack of planning for the sessions
• Boredom from repetition
• Tools not ready (e.g. no markers for whiteboard)
• Fear of repercussions of honest sharing
• Lack of trust
• Lack of respect
• Lack of knowing
• Poor workspace conditions
• Not enough time allotted
• Too many conflicting priorities
• Past results not followed through
• Outsider intrusion

Fortunately many of these impediments are rather easily overcome by planning and preparation. Lack of trust and respect, or fear can be solved by discussing and participating in activities geared towards that end. There are a number of exercises that can be found with a quick Google search. An internet search also helps to find things to mix it up and keep it fresh. 

If there is a lot of resistance to attending the meetings and then lackluster engagement, do not give up! It is too easy to say – “nobody is interested, it’s not worth my time”. Push back to resistance and help the team solve the engagement problems by acknowledging them. Many times just getting them out on the table can create engagement by brainstorming to figure out how to solve them. Sometimes things will be identified that are not difficult to resolve. It helps to build momentum by picking the low-hanging fruit first, but do not give up trying to fix something just because it is not easy. I have found that once a team identifies issues the morale and engagement will increase by finding the resolution together, no matter the difficulty.

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Setup

Setup for the retro session requires some planning and coordination. First of all make sure the team is invited to the meeting. The invitation will list the date, time, location, and specific agenda (details about what kind of retro it will be). Also be sure to mention anything the team will need to do to prepare, if necessary. I like to set a recurring invitation in Outlook so that it does not get forgotten. It is often difficult to get the same meeting room so that may need to be a “TBD” on the recurring appointment, but don’t forget to update the room and other non-consistent information at least 2 days prior to the event. If any of your team members are remote, be sure to include the information for connecting to the remote session right in the meeting invitation. It then helps to remind everyone of the session and any prerequisites at the daily scrum. Including details about the type of meeting planned allows team members to mentally prepare themselves and also serves as a reminder to the organizer that there may be special preparations needed for successful participation relating to the type of activity planned.

Make sure you have everything you will need to conduct the meeting. Some organizations are very good equipping meeting rooms with projectors, flip boards, white board markers, and other supplies, others are not. Scrambling during the allotted meeting time for these supplies is not only disruptive; it eats into time the team could be using to interrelate. In the mind map you will see snacks listed as part of setup. This actually started as a rally cry at a retro for one team that turned out to be kind of a tension breaker. When the discussion got tough or stuck, someone would randomly blurt out “snacks”. I’m not sure why, but this helped to keep it fun. At first we didn’t even have snacks in the room, but it seemed to click that we were doing intensive brain work and our bodies could use some revitalizing nourishment. If there is money in the project budget the SM could bring something nutritional for the team. I don’t recommend donuts, candy, or anything that will be counter to the goals – fruit, nuts, or veggies are the best in my opinion. If there is not money for snacks, have team members rotate responsibility for bringing something for the group. Snacks don’t work for every team – don’t force it.

If the retro falls into a routine it can tend to yield diminishing results. Sometimes routine is good for a scrum team, it builds cadence, but in the retro I find that it means we may not be digging deep enough to uncover issues and are content to dwell on the surface. The team should be cognizant of this and work towards trying new and different approaches to keep it fresh and enable them to make meaningful reflections about what really happened during the sprint. One will not run out of new ideas for “mixing it up” by talking to peers about what works for them and of course asking the internet communities and Google. One could also consult the corporate training department for ideas. I have found this forum topic contributed to by active scrum practitioners to be an excellent resource for finding new ways to keep it fresh. This group is open to join if you are an agile practitioner. I have found it to be populated with some of the brightest, most positive, and helpful people interested in advancing the field of agile methods.

It is sometimes beneficial to set or learn expectations with the team members prior to the session. This could be accomplished one on one or in settings where you have the team assembled. Aside from reminding folks that a session is coming up, I don’t recommend using daily scrum for this because it opens the door to other items that are not officially on the agenda and can use up the time earmarked for sprint updates.

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Facilitate

I like to spend the first session or so having the team come up with rules for engagement. These usually involve guiding them towards effective methods that help uncover issues while keeping a safe environment where people can overcome their fears of sharing. If the team has difficulties, as scrum master, I have no problem suggesting rules with the caveat that it is up to the team to accept or reject them; I’m not forcing them upon the team. 

One of the rules that I like to work towards ensuring is included in some form or another is that we “attack problems, not people”. This helps to setup a safe environment for sharing. I will generally give examples of how to phrase statements using “I” language. This is language where the speaker assumes responsibility and “owns” the problem. Although they may name others, they don’t point the blame at them. An example: “I have a problem when the account for the database connection is disabled without me being notified, because it causes extra time to troubleshoot test failures…”.  I found a great resource for nonviolent communication (NVC) broken down into four parts by Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D. that provides clear guidance on how to use these techniques for speaking and receiving messages in a non-confrontational manner.

It takes practice as session facilitator to know when the team is truly stuck or if they are at a sometimes needed resting place while on the precipice of a major breakthrough. If it is the former, as facilitator the SM will need to move things along. This could mean “sticking a pin in it” and coming back later while moving on to the next item, which sometimes gives time for further thought. The latter could indicate a need for approaching from a different angle. This all takes time and experience to master. The best advice I can offer for getting to the mastery level is to listen to what the team tells you, discuss the challenges with peers, and read all you can about it. Then try out what you have learned.

Many times identifying issues is exhausting and when that is done, it feels like you are done with the entire process. Don’t stop there. It is important to order the items that need improvement and those that went well. Once they are prioritized, concrete plans to mitigate the bad and reinforce the good need to be made so that they can be implemented for next sprint. Once the team identifies items that need improvement and devises a plan for getting there, the scrum master, in her role as impediment remover will often be called to action to help the team follow through and get the needed results.

A critical responsibility of the facilitator is to make sure that the outputs of the sessions are captured. They then need to be published somewhere the team and any team-approved stakeholders can access them. It is also helpful to have space to track progress towards resolution. This helps to build a knowledgebase that can be used for reference in the case that similar issues should arise. It also helps the team with a sense of accomplishment by providing a log for reflecting upon the issues that were overcome. I like SharePoint or Confluence, but any collaboration tool that provides the ability for granular control of permissions and ease of use and access will work as well.

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Participate

This is one of those “easier said than done” scenarios. One can plan and prepare very well only to find that getting the team to open up and honestly talk about what in relation to people, relationships, processes, and tools needs improvement. I’ve never had difficulty eliciting what went well. I usually progressively push harder at subsequent meetings to get the team to dig into the tough questions. Pushing too hard at the beginning can get the opposite of the desired results, and can make it even harder to get to where the team needs to be.

It is inevitable that conflicts and squabbles will arise. Having rules of engagement defined at the outset that the team has mutually established and agreed upon will give an anchor to attach to for resolving them when they do arise. I’ve found that the SM should not be the “rules police”, but should interject thoughtful comments or suggestions when tensions abound. I recommend that the SM allows discourse around disagreements to run their course, as long as the team members don’t resort to personal attacks. I’ve found that teams who have gone through some tense moments and remained focused on the problems come away as a tighter more bonded unit who know and trust each other a little more.

Often positional respect is granted at some level by the recognition that everyone at the table deserves to be there. True personal respect is usually earned by demonstrating wisdom and fortitude under pressure. There is no magic bullet for getting the team to respect one another, but if the rules for engagement encourage members to use language that does not tear down, I have found that the process of resolving tough issues together help to grow respect for one another over time. Here is the link to Dr. Rosenberg’s NVC again. This approach gives many good suggestions that will help the team communicate effectively. If they are consistently applied, I have found that resolving issues becomes easier. I hope that you are able to steer your team to adopting this approach, because I think you will find great success with it.

A key component of process improvement, in my opinion, is accepting accountability for the issues and their resolution. Many times things are identified that are really outside of the control of the team. In these cases it is important that the team still owns the issue and resolution. This helps to prevent giving up on something because it is out of their realm, and keeps them focused on driving needed external process changes that effect team performance. Accountability, especially for external issues, is one of the most difficult aspects of the retro process, but upon success, is one of the biggest morale and momentum builders to be found.

Feedback

The PO not only has an unspoken obligation to lead the team by demonstrating active participation in the retro ceremony, but also responsibilities of providing feedback on results of processes, people, relationships, and tools. They often control the budget and will have a direct ability to adjust tools such as purchasing software that the team thinks will help them deliver a faster, better product. It is imperative that they use this power and influence to help build the team. Providing honest feedback is sometimes difficult, but if done correctly is exactly what the team needs to grow. I’ll link to Dr. Rosenberg’s NVC guide again because the PO should be especially well-versed in this type of communication. It will prove to be a great way to get points across that may not be taken so well if not presented in a way that does not take into account how they will be received. I know from my personal experience that hard truths are always more palatable if I do not feel that I myself am being attacked. I find that instead of immediately pushing back, I actually consider what is being said, and am more apt to respond in a thoughtful and purposeful way that continues the discussion rather than shutting it down.

There are many opportunities in the retro for a PO to realize options to provide true value to the customer. By being open and transparent they increase everything that helps a team reach top performance. By recognizing and celebrating successes they build morale which transforms teams and helps to deliver a product that will amaze the customer. Although very difficult at times, putting in the effort will always help deliver positive results. In practice, I’ve seen time and again that this is true, and have never found evidence to the contrary.

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Observe

Bringing in people who are external to the core team should always be done with careful consideration. There are times when the PO would like to share the process with other stakeholders. The Schr?dinger’s cat paradox rings true in this case because the observers seem to influence how the team interacts when they are cognizant of observation. One way to minimize undue negative influence if the stakeholders are to observe is to have them do it remotely and be completely silent during the whole process. I feel it should never be done without the team’s knowledge and consent, but using this method, while still having the observer effect, can sometimes work to a degree after the team gets past the initial consciousness of outside observance.

I respect the PO decision to bring in outside persons but will usually recommend tailoring a retro activity to include them rather than simply having them try to observe the team in action. This can provide a welcome change and result in surprising outcomes that may help to build rapport and understanding. An exercise like “5 whys” may be appropriate for this situation. I encourage the team to take some time to plan something that will respect the stakeholder’s interest in team activities while allowing for productive use of the time.

Get to Know Each Other

In my experience getting to know one another on a more personal level helps team members to connect, builds trust and respect, and increases engagement. Sometimes people are reserved and do not like to share too much of themselves in a work environment. This should always be respected and everything should be done to protect their privacy. As a facilitator of the retros, the SM should be aware of pressure on members to share more than that for which they are comfortable. Often, as time goes on and trust is built, even the more reserved members will share more and more. Starting by getting to know professional personas is effective too and can lead to greater sharing down the road.

There are several methods and activities a team can engage in to help increase the bond that comes from getting to know each other better. Because the retros should always remember to keep to the main purpose of identifying things that went well and things that need improving, I have found that it is best to devote just a portion of the session to getting to know each other activities and building understanding over time, rather than trying to do too much at once. A method I have not yet tried in practice, but come with great recommendations and success stories from my peers is “personal mapping”. I am looking forward to try this method at the next opportunity I have. I have found these guides that look intriguing and go into some details about personal maps and life maps.

I have found other activities such as affirmations to be helpful. This is where a part of each retro section could be devoted affirming a single team member. It simply involves choosing one team member to be selected and each of the other team members telling that person one personal attribute they like about that person. The only rules are that it has to be positive and has to be about their character (not “I like your hair”) and how that trait helps the person giving the affirmation and the team as a whole.

Sometimes to break things up you may want to get the team out of their normal environment and take a field trip. This could be as simple as meeting at the local coffee shop, or in another building on campus.

Because getting to know you activities should be designed with integral knowledge of the team and other circumstances I’m not going to get into more specifics here. There are plenty of resources one can tap to plan and integrate these with your sessions; it’s just a matter of purposefully planning to include them. I can attest that the team will see good results by judiciously interspersing retros with different approaches. This keeps it fun and interesting.

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Insight

Before a team can devise a plan to resolve issues they need to identify them. This comes by gaining insight. Sometimes things are not so apparent at first glance. There are a number of approaches the team can take to uncover issues. 

A “go-to” method for me is the “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” form of brainstorming. This can be very effective and easy to get the team engaged in. It can also become diluted and ineffective if overused, so take care about this. One will get a sense of overuse if the results tend to be very similar from session to session.  

It is executed by writing the headings “The Good”, “The Bad”, and “The Ugly” on a whiteboard (or virtual whiteboard if you have remote participants). The facilitator then opens up the floor, asking the team to reflect upon last sprint, to blurt out things in regards to people, relationships, processes, and tools that would fit in each category. Like any kind of brainstorming the facilitator should encourage as many ideas as possible without evaluating them. Evaluation, pruning and prioritization come next. The team should assess each, assign order, and provide details around how and why to improve it. By progressive elaboration of those details the team devises an action plan to correct them. Be sure to capture the plans which should reinforce the good, and have mitigation/remediation steps for the bad and the ugly.

The mind map includes other suggestions for gaining insight. A plethora of practical guides for each can be found with a Google search. I recommend trying out different approaches to keep it fresh, fun, and interesting. Just remember to keep your end goal in mind which is to have concrete plans for sprint process improvement that the team can apply. I think from time to time, if there are activities which help build foundations, it is okay if there is not a specific plan as output for the session, as long as it is infrequent and actually adds to understanding, builds trust, and bonds the team. This is my opinion, and should only happen if the entire team is on board.

Action Plan

This is the crux of the retro ceremony. I have provided key words around the action plan bubble in the mind map to help reinforce components. This is the least esoteric of all the elements of the retro process and I believe the easiest for teams to “get their minds around”. This is likely due to the type of work the team is and has been involved with throughout their career. Most people have heard of SMART goals; Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, and Time-related. I believe these are excellent guidelines to keep in mind when forming action plans.

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Benefits & Results

I believe and have found to be true that teams who invest time and effort into full engagement in this process will produce; product improvements, personal growth, professional growth, team growth, and organizational growth. Like everything in life, the output depends upon the input. How well scrum retrospectives are executed can mean the difference between mediocre product that nobody is very excited about and truly innovative product that amazes the stakeholders.