Which retrospective is best for the teams?
Hello readers, This is my first LinkedIn article, I was planning to write here from days but I was confused about where I should start. Yesterday I was talking one of our company scrum masters, he was asking this question which retro model he should use within his scrum team because they are struggling with the classical scrum retro model(what went well?/ what could be improved & action items).
From that discussion, I got the idea of writing something on the retrospective. I will try to write my next few articles on the different retro models which I tried with my different teams and my leaning experience from these retrospectives.
Why we need a retrospective meeting?
The retrospective meeting is to analyze the current process which we following and to identify areas of improvement with the achievements which team achieve in the previous iteration.
Best Retro Model?
There is no single retrospective model that is best for the teams and everyone should follow that. We have to first analyze the current situation and needs of the team, accordingly, we can choose the retro model. Till now I tried more than 20+ retrospective models with different kanban, scrum & SAFe teams.
Today I am writing about the most successful retrospective model and that is "Marginal Gains". This model basic fits in all different kinds of teams.
What is the Marginal Gains model?
This model based on Sir Dave Brailsford's 100 things by 1% improvement theory which says:-
"It's very difficult to improve 1 thing by 100%. It's much easier to improve 100 things by 1% for the same effect"
According to this, participants to look for small wins, the little things that could be easily done and adding great value to improvements.
How we can drive this retrospective?
- Ask each participant to write issues on the stickies and put them on the board under the issues section.
- Now ask everyone to Individually brainstorm on issues and write a quick win on each problem.
- Before that define what you mean by quick wins:
"A quick win is something that could be implementable in a couple of hours, with very little cost."
- Collect all ideas and place on the board under 1% gain for further discussion (filtering activity)
Examples:-
Here are some examples from one of marginal gain retro:
Problem-1:- How to improve quality testing and monitoring?
1% Gain:- Create a sonar cube discussion task for the next sprint. (initiate the solution)
Problem-2:- Team is not Cross-functional and we need training for team members.
1% Gain:- Team list down cross-functional topics on which they need training.
When we should use this Retrospective?
As I already wrote, it helps with any kind of team(scrum/kanban) but it really helps with the teams where they are struggling to implement the action items from the retrospective because of the large scale of implementation ideas.
In the next article, I will try to cover two retrospectives and the benefits from those retrospectives.
Agile Mentor, Sr. Delivery Manager at Material+
5 年Nice Read Chetan.! Marginal Gains is indeed a good exercise to identify and work on low hanging fruits; and get some quick wins.? However, I don't recommend to templatise the Retro styles and chose a winner out of those. The intent is to "Inspect and Adapt". To keep it simple - settle the intent of Retro first and the right questions to ponder in retro will come up on itself. Here's what I think before conducting any retro. What do you want to inspect? >> what is the inspection/measuring criteria? >> How to adopt? (Action Plan) Retro styles are although good to read and explore, in order to gain perspectives.
Agile Product Delivery
5 年So this may be because of a small error but you contradicted yourself. You said there is no single model that works best for every team and then a couple statements later you say “this is the most successful model”. I’m hoping you meant that that model is the one that you personally had the best success with; not that this model is the undisputed champion. In my opinion, the best model for retros is the ever changing one. What I mean is that you should keep the format fresh. Don’t do the same format twice in a row. Don’t be lazy, find new ways to serve your team in this.
thanks for sharing :- chetan sharma, PSM-1?, SFC? I will be using 1% improvement theory in my upcoming retro.
Sr Enterprise Agilist / Agile Coach |SASM| |ICP-ATF| |RTE| |CSPO| |ICP-ACC| |CSM| |PSM1| Cognizant
5 年This is a great article and it is what I use with my teams that were onsite. It helped them to be more outspoken, build trust with each other and our communication as a team grew tremendously.
Innovation & Agile Training & Coaching for Senior Leadership, Agile Training & Coaching for Middle Management, Team Agile
5 年I believe these are the type of articles people appreciate. It's like product review articles where try out the different products and give your impression and recommendations. People will use your articles to make better decisions and be more productive. I know I will be using the information in this article as I have situation concerning Retro structure that just occurred.