Know the 5 Stages of Retrospective, to Run a Great Scrum Event
What is a sprint Retrospective?
A sprint retrospective is a meeting where an agile team evaluates the previous sprint cycle in order to improve the future development processes.
Sprint retrospective is considered as an opportunity for reflection.
Importance of Sprint Retrospective -
- The retro event helps resolve conflicts within the team
- Team sits together to inspect and adapt
- Helps creates transparency & builds trust among team members
- Helps identify risks at early stages
No matter how good a scrum team is, there is always opportunity to improve.
Sprint retrospectives can also help your team avoid some common pitfalls, such as operating in silos or misalignment on scrum processes and goals. It’s all about working together as a team to reinforce agile principles, improve practices, and surface any roadblocks on a regular basis.
5 Stages to Conduct an Effective Agile Retrospective
The first phase of a retrospective is a chance for the team to “check in”. Many teams skip this phase, and that’s a big mistake! We engineers tend to jump right into analyzing problems and finding solutions, but I have learnt with my experiences that it doesn’t work every time.
Stage 1 — Set the Stage
Explain the team why are they here? Review the action items from last sprint. Review the Matrices of the sprint/project, here you can also brief about the Retro Technique/Game that you have selected for that particular event.
Benefits-
- It gives everyone a chance to context switch (from thinking about the last thing they were working on to thinking about the bigger picture.)
- It encourages participation (even from the silent ones)
- It grabs everyone’s attention (use setting The Stage as an opportunity to have some fun, it’ll help you grab team’s attention for the rest of the conversation.)
Stage 2 — Gather Data
The second phase of the retrospective gives your team the chance to look back at your iteration to create a shared understanding of the events that shaped the present. The goal here is to capture as much information as possible by focusing on the sprints or iterations that just ended.
Benefits-
- It gets people on the same page
- It expands everyone’s viewpoint
- It can create alignment about what’s most important
Type of objective data to bring in discussion -
- Sprint Goal
- Burndown Chart
- Velocity
- Number of meetings
- Number of stories completed
- Number of stories completed as a percent of number of stories started
- Number of new support requests
- Throughput (# of work items finished per day)
- Average cycle time
- WIP (# of work items started but not finished)
- Number of new defects introduced
Some questions you can ask to gather Subjective Data:
- When did you feel motivated during the sprint? Unmotivated?
- What was the best moment during the iteration? The worst?
- How happy were you with the new practice of <x> (maybe you introduced a new git commit strategy or started pair programming)
Stage 3 — Generate Insights
Ok, so you’ve Set the Stage to get everyone “checked in” and you’ve Gathered Data to build a shared understanding of the facts. Now it’s time to analyze the data you’ve collected to discover insights and to find root causes.
Generating Insights encourages you to think deeply about issues, which helps to expand your horizons by helping you see the big picture.
Stage 4 — Decide What to do
A lot of scrum teams have really great conversations, but fail to develop any action items in order to move forward with the process.
Now that you’ve analyzed the issue at hand, it’s (finally) time to make it actionable. Your team will love this phase — fixing problems is what Solution Focused engineers want to do most. Engagement shouldn’t be a problem. The focus here is making sure you pick the best action for the upcoming iteration.
Stage 5 — Close the Retrospective
Many teams make the mistake of ending the meeting before closing the feedback loop in this phase. Closing The Retrospective takes just a few minutes and it’s well worth your time.
Benefit —
- It gives a chance to reflect
- It gives an opportunity to document the results
- It creates space for celebration
These five actionable steps will help your team master their ideal version of a sprint retrospective in no time. Keep in mind that sprint retrospectives are completely customizable! Encourage your team to try different sets of activities during the meetings or dig deeper into follow-up tasks with a unique approach tailored to their personal needs.
-Karishma
