Scrum of Retrospective

Scrum of Retrospective, whats that ? googling.....it...

Scrum : Scrum is an agile framework for managing work with an emphasis on software development.

Of : Expressing the relationship between a part and a whole.

Retrospective : A retrospective (from Latin retrospectare, "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past.

We know scrum! we know retrospective! we know what 'of' is (lol) but whats "Scrum of Retrospective" ? even google and wiki has no reference available for it!

Hang on, Lets try to understand this buzz word !

What generally we (agilist) do in retrospective? Umm... we discuss on celebrating the successes by recalling What went well? we find opportunities to inspect and improve by asking our selves What did not go well? and once we have answers for both the questions handy, Its time to jot down 'action items', where, we list down Items we are planning to continue, Items we wanted to stop doing and Items on which we want to start working on as an improvement areas which generally we can get by asking What should be improved upon? to our selves.

 Not a big deal... right?

Ideally, we collect retrospective points with action items and share along with the scrum team and we move-on... for the next challenges the next sprint, very much similar to our move on after break-up! :P

It is obvious or can say tendency of human nature to move on...(i'm not a psychologist) but many time we miss the bag which we should carry with us, a bag of action items which can help us to sprint better than we had just before. 

Sometime we refuses to carry the bag thinking that it would slow us down for sprinting or we might be thinking that who will carry that bag? and finally no one carries it and keeps themselves involved and engaged with new target, new sprint until we reach to the retrospection ceremony again.

Process of collecting action items isn't going to help us sprint better until we actually work on them.

Scrum of Retrospective is an idea of making sure that we are carrying a bag of action items with us so that we can consciously and constantly review them on the way during the sprint without having the feeling of lifting the heavy bag. Sounds interesting, But how ?

Mindset, Lets change the mindset !!!

"Retrospective ceremony should not be held at the end of the sprint but it should be arranged at the beginning of the next sprint! "

You might be wondering that whats the difference here ? It looks exactly same... Yes above statements doesn't changes the position of the retrospective ceremony but the difference is, It changes our thought process or mindset towards retrospection. 

We generally let things go once that gets ended, In our case action items collected from the retrospection done at the end of sprint might be overlooked as we know that sprint is over and we will make ourselves busy in being ready for the next sprint. but, with this new mindset of doing retrospective at the beginning of the next sprint reminds us carry the bag of action items as healthy food and juice which will eventually bring energy for sprint we are targeting to start.

We all know and agree that generally the bag of action items are overlooked just because we do not follow 'Lifecycle of Retrospective' (Umm.., now whats that ?).

Lifecycle of Retrospective is nothing but technique to carry a bag of action items until we successfully follows, work-on or implement it, In other word, lifecycle of retrospective reminds us that we should perform action for the defined action items and we should review them until we successfully complete them.

But what if bag of action items is heavy? who is responsible for carrying it? Me? No way...

To understand it (carrier of the bag) better, lets take an example, (of scrum) We work on product backlog and pull work-items in sprint backlog and we try to achieve goal by iterating through sprints to deliver the final/iterative version of the product.

We are able to do it with ease because we are consciously following lifecycle, In other word 'Scrum' where we are maintaining and measuring the requirement, we are focusing on the progress, we are ensuring about timely delivery, we collects continuous feedback and we deliver incremental product, we are giving commitments and we show team spirit to achieve the goal together.

Just like product backlog..., Creating action item backlog of retrospected points and working on them applying Scrum is called Scrum of Retrospective.

Scrum of Retrospective helps us inspecting the progress and allow us delivering commonly derived actions which we know that those are highly needed for the betterment of the team to perform future sprints.

Eventually the Scrum of Retrospective produces knowledge backlog for other scrum teams across the origination where scrum teams could review and learn from each other rather inventing the wheel again. (I mean it not necessary to do same mistake which already done by another team)

If you have any Idea, Question or Thought regarding 'Scrum of Retrospective' concept feel free share it via comment! Together we will try making scrum better.

Thanks for flying with me!