Retrospectives: A Product Owner’s Insight

The retrospective is a very important component of Scrum when working with Agile methodology. Before going into details why Retrospective is so important and what its actual benefits are, I would like to very briefly go over what Agile actually is, how it works and what its benefits are for the stakeholders.

Product Development with Agile Methodology

Agile is one of the most innovative and flexible software development methodologies, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing and cross-functional teams.

Unlike the Waterfall methodology, that was previously broadly in use, Agile and its subset Scrum has a different, more innovative and flexible approach to the development processes, focusing on more important and functional areas such as:

• Individuals and interactions instead of processes and tools
• Working software instead of comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration instead of contract negotiation
• Responding to change instead of following a plan

The Agile methodology encourages close teamwork,frequent communication with the client, more detailed planning and monitoring of the working process in general, and at the same time, openness to change and continuous improvement.

Hence, working with this methodology is beneficial for all the stakeholders of the organization:

• Customers find that the vendor is more responsive to development requests and deliver the high-value features more quickly.
• Vendors increase the efficiency and decrease overhead by focusing their efforts on high-value features and reduce time-to-market.
• Development teams benefit as they can concentrate mostly on their job, what they like doing and can enjoy the product they have created already working and creating value from the beginning of its development.
• External stakeholders, such as C-level executives also benefit from using Scrum as in this way they have more visibility into the project and, therefore, are more flexible and can easily adjust their strategies based on more complex information and less speculation.
• Product Owners must ensure that development work is aligned with customer needs. Scrum makes this alignment easier by providing frequent opportunities to re-prioritize work, to ensure maximum delivery of value. Planning and tracking is easier and more precise with Scrum, compared to Waterfall processes.

The Product Owner and Scrum Team

The focus on task-level tracking, the use of Burndown Charts to display daily progress, and the Daily Scrum meetings, all together give the Project Owner tremendous awareness about the project.

Scrum meetings are the basis of the efficient work and the best way for the team to catch up and to know where they are at that moment.

There are 5 main types of scrum meetings:

1. Everyday Stand Up,
2. Grooming,
3. Planning,
4. Demo,
5. Retrospective.

Everyday Stand Ups — for the Product Owner (PO) and each team member it is a great opportunity to have a daily visibility into what is happening, where the team is, and which team member is going to take up a specific task.

Grooming and Planning- it is a great opportunity for you, as a PO, to one more time go over the User Stories you have initially prepared, look at them from the developers’ perspective, because you might have missed something (usually this happens when you lack the technical background), as well as, estimating the work and understanding if the team is in line with the deadlines.

Demo- this meeting is very important in terms of team and client communication and for the client to be updated on the progress of the project.

Retrospective- this is one of the key mechanisms in Scrum to improve the quality of the delivered product and the way people work. It is a good opportunity not only for the developers and the Scrum Master, but also for POs to continuously learn and improve.

Product Owner and Retrospectives

Retrospective is some kind of a review session for the development team for the 2-week sprint. All the team members gather in one place for 1 hour and honestly open up about the sprint working process.

The main goal of these meetings is to discover and identify what has been done well and what is yet to be improved in our working processes. Usually the team members specify some issues and we together come up with actionable improvement measures (from small things to larger actions/changes). All the team members contribute their time and put an effort, so that the next sprint is more productive and efficient, and that each of us improves along our cooperation, on the long journey of creating a better future.

Based on my experience, which t be honest isn’t quite long, I still remember my first Retrospectives and can clearly specify the most important points of running a successful Retrospective session:

1. Make the process easy-going — the PO and Scrum Master must create the atmosphere for the team members to feel like voicing their problems.
2. Acquire the trust of the team — otherwise they will not talk to you, they must know that their effort and input is appreciated and no one will judge them. In fact, it’s just the opposite- we are there to improve as a team.
3. Have a warm up — that is do not jump into identifying and solving issues starting from the beginning of the meeting. You need to come to it smoothly.
4. Retrospective isn’t a court trial- they must not resemble court hearings, be very serious and trembling. On the opposite, we are here to speak up and discuss, find solutions together, as a team.
5. Have fun- these meetings, unlike the other 4, mentioned above, can be as creative as you can only imagine. The only thing you have to do is turn on your creative thinking, and come up with interesting ideas in the format of the meeting.
6. Every meeting needs to be in a different format- the team must enjoy the meetings and never think of it just as a required session, waste of their precious time. So, the meeting must be interesting for them, and they have to be excited about what’s in hold this time.

Let me share 2 creative Retrospective ideas I have come up with for now:

• One was kind of a simulation of DC world, as if our team were the Justice League, each of us was a superhero and had to protect the sprint using their superpowers.
• The second one was the game “Truth and Dare”- the best creative way I could have come up with for making the people talk and have fun at the same time. If any of them didn’t answer the “Truth” question, as a penalty, they had to take another paper from the “Dare” section, where the tasks were far more complicated.

So, to sum up, I would mention the following as benefits of Retrospective for POs:

1. Strengthen relationship/improve collaboration within the team
2. Understand delivered results or delays
3. Great opportunity to improve your skills by having feedback on user story length, acceptance criteria, not enough groomings and other.
4. More insight into some tasks such as having reserve hours, having refactorings of some processes and etc.

There are plenty of WHYs that seek an answer and Retrospectives are the best way to find them out.

Finally, the last but not least point about Retrospectives, is that you should never be afraid of being criticised and be open to receiving all kinds of comments and feedback, moreover, if the team is not providing any, you should ask for them. And remember, the key of our profession is the constant learning especially when operating in this rapidly changing and developing environment.

About this author:

Lilit Gyurjyan is a sophisticated product owner who’s just made a move into the diverse world of IT.

Let’s talk!