6.6: Agile Retrospectives - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems

<v ->Agile retrospectives are an important part</v> of Agile Adoption. One series of improvements I identified, the goal is to implement relevant improvements for the team. The teams are empowered in deciding how to prioritize those improvements and which techniques to use. Every sprint they conduct a retrospective where they prioritize their areas of improvement, analyze root causes, and agree on a small number of action items. Usually there are three, four, or five action items that they want to commit to as a team during the upcoming sprint. After implementing those improvements during the sprint, the team starts the next sprint retrospective by discussing whether the action items they're implemented brought them the results. If yes, they persevere and make those decisions part of their process. And if not, they discuss how to pivot and try some other measures. This short feedback loop allows the teams to be productive and nimble in addressing productivity, quality, and other concerns. It also allows for an honest conversation between the team members because the retrospectives are internal to the team; managers are usually not included. There are multiple techniques that are being implemented to enable inclusive and open discussion during a retrospective. A standard technique for retrospective has three steps. One is silent brainstorming. Participants write their comments on two topics: What went well last sprint? And what are the improvement opportunities? They put those on post-its, physical or virtual, and then post them on the retrospective board. Once items are posted on the board, team members group them into categories. The second step is prioritization. Each team member gets an equal number of votes, and places their votes as dots on the group of items they would like to prioritize. The third step is action item. The whole team discusses the highest voted groups of suggestions and agrees on three to five action items they'd like to implement in the upcoming sprint. Usually each item is owned by one of the team members who continuously updates the team on their progress. There are actually many formats that are being used by retrospective. This format includes glad, sad, mad. In this case, the team members start by silently brainstorming on three topics based on the observations from the prior sprint, then describe them in each other group and vote, but basically it starts with what I'm glad about. What made me sad, what I'm really mad, and want to change right away. Another popular format is called start, stop, continue, where the team reflects on three topics: What should we start doing? What should we stop doing? And what should we continue to be doing as a team? The team members add their post-its to each category, followed by a discussion. So these are gamified format and there are many of those. There is no prescription which should be used. In a remote environment, retrospective can be very productive, collaborative, and fun. Virtual retrospective boards are available in MURAL, Miro, InVision Freehand, and in many other formats. Retrospective, if done right, always makes team members engaged, motivated, and makes the team better.