Sprint Retrospective — a 3-min overview
Welcome to Scrum Sutra — a series where I shall share a 3-min overview of each element of Scrum and how it connects with the other elements in the bead to form Scrum Sutra.
Today, I shall talk about Sprint Retrospective.
The purpose of Sprint Retrospective is to plan ways to increase quality and effectiveness.
The entire Scrum Team participates in this event, including the Product Owner, the Scrum Master and the Developers.
The event is timeboxed to maximum of 3 hours for a one-month Sprint and is usually shorter for a shorter duration of Sprint.
The reason to timebox is to increase transparency in effectiveness of the event, and retain focus on objective. It is the accountability of Scrum Master to ensure that the event remain within timebox. He also ensures that the Developers understand the purpose of the event, that it takes place in a positive, productive way.
In the Sprint Retrospective, the Scrum Team inspects all aspects like Individuals and their interactions, processes and tools, and even Definition of Done. Depending on the domain being worked upon, other elements may also be inspected.
In the Sprint Retrospective, the Scrum Team
(1) inspects all aspects of their process
(2) generate new insights and then
(3) decide on what actions will be taken for improvement.
While Scrum Guide is not prescriptive of the format and let the self-managing Scrum Team decide on the structure of the event, it encourages Scrum Team to focus on what went well during the Sprint, what problems they encountered and how those problems were solved or not solved.
At the end of Sprint Retrospective, the Scrum Team have the list of most helpful changes to improve its effectiveness. The most impactful improvement may be addressed as soon as possible and may even be added to the Sprint Backlog for the next Sprint. As needed, their DoD may also be revised. Scrum Master ensures there is sufficient transparency w.r.t. the output of Sprint Retrospective.
In this event, the entire Scrum Team remains committed to improvement, focused on increasing quality and effectiveness, open to inspect all aspect of their processes, respect each other’s inputs and courageous to engage in healthy conflict, to admit mistake and to pick up tough areas to change.
That’s a 3-min overview on Sprint Retrospective. Stay tuned to the next in the Scrum Sutra series.
