All Things Agile — Running a Retrospective
What is the reaction of your team when it comes to having a retrospective?
Is the meeting greeted with smiles and enthusiasm? Or is it greeted with “Can we postpone this? I have better things to do.”
If it is the latter, keep reading to see if we can change that thought!
Why are retrospectives important?
For agile practices to be sticky and for teams to improve their efficiency, feedback is very important. How else do you identify the real issues a team faces or identify steps for improvement?
Retrospective is a time to reflect, vent frustrations, agree on an action plan on how we can do the next sprint better, and solidify everyone is on the same page.
What’s in a retro?
A general retro contains the following:
- Setting the stage — Make participants feel welcome, warm and fuzzy to the retro. Review previous action items.
- Gathering data — Find out what happened in the last sprint. Ask what went well and what did not. Rinse and repeat with everyone.
- Generating insight — What actions do we need to take to make the next sprint better?
- Decide what to do — Vote on priority of actions and decide the owners of those actions.
- Closing the retro — Feedback on how participants feel about the retro so the next retro can be even better.
How to put the sass back into retros
Here are some ideas to bring retros back into the good books.
1. Change the retro activities every sprint — No one wants the same boring retro activities over and over again. Why not change the activities up?
We use a very excellent tool https://retromat.org/ which helps achieve the same results differently.
2. Change facilitator — The same person does not always have to run the retro. In our team, we have a different person run the retro every sprint. This always adds to an element of surprise and every person puts their own spin on the retros.
3. Change location — There is no hard and fast rule that the retro needs to be run in a boring room with post-its (yawn). Take it down to the park. On the way there, why not have a candid conversation about how the team felt about how the sprint went.
4. Create your own activities — We all know what is required from a retro, why not use your creativity and think of your own activities to achieve those goals.
Looking for ideas?
I cannot emphasise how much https://retromat.org/ has helped make retros a lot more enjoyable!
Another one is using improv cards from https://management30.com/product/improv-cards/.
This is a great way to use to set the stage or to close a retro. Everyone’s interpretations of the images are always surprising!
Or why not write your own set of question cards?
Last but not least, make a retro toolkit so you can bring retro anywhere you want!
