Continuous Team Improvements through Agile Retrospectives
What are Retrospectives?
Retrospectives are regular checkpoints by scrum teams working on projects to self-reflect on their performance and discuss ideas and action items for continous improvement. They are a way to learn from whats worked for them, inspect the processes they use and find areas where they can improve. Done regularly — the refinement leads to collaborative and incremental improvements leading to high performance.
One of the Agile Principles clearly advocate this exercise among Agile Teams.
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
Why do we need retrospectives?
Unlike traditional “feedback sessions” which take place after the project is done — retrospectives are done regularly.
Here are some basic reasons why they are so effective.
- The team owns the retrospectives.
- There is more buy-in from the members as they feel empowered going into this meeting.
- This leads to less resistance for changes agreed in the meeting
- The team decides and actions the items in the retrospectives instead of handing them over for execution
The importance of retrospectives comes from the fact that they empower the teams and make them accountable for their continuous improvement over time leading to generating considerable business value. As they are done each sprint the actions are small, yet impactful and help teams improve in a collaborative, efficient and positive manner.
Prerequisites for an effective Retrospective
Having a ritual make self -improvement a habit for the teams as everyone involved in the project is a part of the retrospective
The meeting be called “retrospective” consistently so there is alignment over its meaning and purpose across the organisation.
Prime directive — the safeness factor where teams feel comfortable to speak up and suggest ways of improving no matter who is in the “room”
The prime directive states the following:
“Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.” — Norm Kerth
Ensuring that the meeting does not end up being a complain box or a finger pointing exercise
A facilitator who is skilled and can accomplish the goals set for the retrospective by using the right exercises at the appropriate stage of the project.
Strictly time-boxed — typically 2 hours for a 2 week sprint.
Structure of a retrospective
The Structure of the meeting generally consists of the following sections
1.Set the stage — this is where the expectation and outcomes of the meeting are agreed with the team upfront.
2. Gather data — about the recent sprint, extract valuable information from the team and come up with some data points and metrics derived from the last sprint. This creates a shared understanding and aligns everyone with the same picture across the team.
3. Generate insights — Now ask Why? Go deep into understanding these challenges and any patterns if the team can spot whole team focus on the process instead of the individuals. Team gathers insights which help them to see how to work more effectively — which is the ultimate goal of any retrospective. Time spent generating insights helps ensure that when your team plans an improvement, it’s one that will make a positive difference
4. Decide what to do — Finally the areas of improvement are broken down into small and measurable action items which can be done in the next sprint interval. In addition these action items are owned by the team and ownership spread across the members.
5. Close the retrospective — Decide how to document the experience and plan for follow-up. Help your team decide how they would retain what they have learned from the retrospective. Ensure that the team agrees the objectives of the meeting are met — note any exceptions for the next meeting.
Other Important aspects.
The space and environment for the retrospective should be comfortable and have space where people could have room to move around. It should have some colourful material , markers, whiteboards and ideally bright sunlight This kind of space inspires safety, creativity and keeps the event productive.
If the team is distributed then video conferencing software should be used to ensure team members can see their remote counterparts and put a face to the name. If possible at least once a month /quarter — the entire team should come face-face for a meeting
Who should run the retro?
Typically a scrum master is asked to run the meeting — but since the scrum master is in charge of removing impediments and not finding process improvements — this exercise is best done via an agile facilitator or coach. Its an advantage to have an impartial voice as this person can be very objective and should guide the team to find their own areas of improvements and the related action plan by asking the right questions via effective exercises. Care should be taken to ensure this does not turn into a brainstorming meeting or a complaint box and personal bias should be reserved at all costs.
Retrospective Exercises
A typical retrospective has the following questions or sections.
1.What went well?
2.What did not go that well?
3. What did we learn? (and can improve)
4. What still puzzles the team?(optional variation)
Starfish
Another popular exercise is the starfish which goes round the team with 1–2 items to be categorised vi the the sections shown in the starfish below.
The PANCAKE approach meant for newer teams provides more structure in terms of discussion points.
Puzzles — what puzzles the team.
Appreciation — which team members would be worthy of appreciation
News — any news relevant to the project that team members would like to share?
Challenges — any challenges they team wants to discuss or tackle.
Aspirations — aspirations for the next sprint.
Knowledge — any knowledge sharing relevant to the project to be shared.
Endorsements — any best practices the team wants to endorse.
There are a variety of exercises not limited to sailboat, car brand, One word, Happiness Index, Five times why, Constellation, Team assessment survey (product-ownership health, sprint health, team health, and technical health), high performance tree and value stream mapping. Depending on where the team stands in the project or their maturity — the coach can facilitate an appropriate exercise and keep rotating a bit to keep it interesting and engaging.
Finding Insights
The Facilitator / Coach should encourage the team to a healthy discussion based on asking meaningful questions which are related to improvement of processes within the team(initial days). Eventually the team should be asking these questions among themselves. Asking relevant and powerful questions is a skill which requires practice and the coach should lead the team to be self-managing. The most basic structure to begin with could be “What, Why, How and Who”
Further more the team should be gently nudged (by the faciliator) to come up with their own areas to focus on with the solutions considering all available options and alternatives.
One useful technique is to Use 5 whys to find root cause for process improvement items. (if and when required)
Deciding on a course of action:
Once the areas of improvement are identified and agreed by the team, they can decide to identify those items and add them to their list of items for the next sprint.
The team can follow the suggested structure.
- Identify Action items
- Create a clear list of actionable items which are small, measurable and attainable in the next sprint
- Team members takes responsibility of these items themselves.
- It is agreed to complete and revisit these items in the next sprint to measure improvement.
Summary
Retrospectives are a key factor to help Agile teams improve by inspect and adapt on a ongoing basis. There are varied exercises which a skilled practitioner can facilitate in a time boxed period to help teams self -reflect and agree on improvements each sprint.
Retrospectives bring benefits to agile teams. They help them improve and deliver value to their customers. And by improving team performance, retrospectives deliver value to your business.
Altaf Rehmani is a Technology Innovator, helped various businesses with Digital transformation projects, Agile Evangelist and a champion of applying technology to enable business growth. He lives in Hong Kong and can be reached via email or twitter. Please leave your feedback and a clap if you have liked this article.
Other articles which may be of interest:
Managing High Performing teams
Common Mistakes in Agile Implementations
