Steps for Successful Sprint Retrospectives

Sprint retrospectives happen right after a sprint completes and provide an opportunity for the team to inspect and improve their agile methods and teamwork.  In this short article, we will provide recommended steps for successful sprint retrospectives.

The Retrospective Process

 The retrospective asks the team 3 basic questions:

• What went well during the sprint?
• Where are the areas we can improve?
• What should we be doing differently?

In their book Agile Retrospectives, Esther Derby and Diana Larsen discuss a 5 steps process:

Set the Stage

At the beginning of a sprint retrospective, the facilitator has to create an environment where participants feel safe and comfortable.  This is where you can get creative with an icebreaker question. .  It could be as simple as asking each individual how they felt the completed sprint went.  Are they happy, sad, or indifferent?  The goal is to get them speaking before moving on to the other stages.

Gather Data

During the gather data stage, you are going to get a picture of what happened during the sprint.  The team needs to have a common picture for what happened in order to solve any problems.  These should be based on observations, facts and findings.  There are many techniques you can use to gather data.  One thing I like to do is to draw a timeline showing how the sprint progresses.  Plot on the timeline major events that happened.  I also like to review the teams burndown and burnup charts to see how work progressed.  Was it a sustainable pace?  Did the team end up doing a mini-waterfall by waiting until the very end to test?

Generate Insights

In this step, the team analyzes and evaluates the gathered data to generate meaningful insights.   The team need to collaborate using exercises to make sense of the gathered data.  This will help them understand the implications of the problems before figuring out ways to solve them.  Some of the exercises you can use are:

• Brainstorming – The team generates a large list of ideas that will be filtered and grouped into a consolidated list.
• The 5 Why’s – Asking Why 5 times helps people move past their initial response to get to the root cause.
• Fishbone Analysis – A diagram tool that gets to the root cause.

Decide what to do

The team decides what to do from the list of identified problems.  The team will think about and discuss what they want to do in the next sprint.  What will they do differently next sprint?

The outcome should be a list of action items.  I advise my teams to write action items as tasks and place them in the backlog.  This holds everyone accountable for process improvement.

Close the retrospective

This is the final step of the retrospective.  We thank each other for their time and healthy collaboration towards process improvement.

Additional Tips for Success in Retrospectives

1. Plan an agenda:  One mistake I see Scrum Masters make is not having a good plan for facilitating the retrospective.  You have to engage the Product Owner and Team. Make sure you are focussed on discussing these three things:
   1. What worked well that we should do again?
   2. What didn’t work well?
   3. What changes should we make for the next sprint and beyond?
2. Keep a list of action items:  It’s very important to keep track of the action items the team discusses during the sprint retrospective and having a plan to follow up on these items.  I suggest to focus on low-hanging fruit initially to get quick wins.  You should tackle the larger items incrementally through collaboration with your team and external partners as needed.   Showing attention towards speedy action to retrospective follow-ups will show the team you really care about them and the project, it shows leadership, and allows you to incrementally improve.
3.  Get Creative:  Try something different.  For example, before the retrospective, ask each team member to describe the last sprint using one word.  Each person will then describe what they thought about the last sprint, this will set the stage for how everyone felt went well and what did not go so well.  There are ways to get creative, get creative and make this a fun retrospective!
4. Stay focussed but be neutral:  As a Scrum Master, you are the facilitator of the sprint retrospective.  You must ensure the retrospective stays focussed around what went well and what did not go well.  Listen to the team but do not try to give biased opinions.  This is a time for the team to come together with process improvements for upcoming sprints.

Good luck!

Steve Peterson

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