Retrospectives Techniques

Retrospective Techniques
Luca Grulla
ESSAP, Varese (Italy)

What is a retrospective ?
“ A ritual held at the end of a project to learn from experience and to plan changes for the next effort".

The Prime Directive
"Regardless what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills, and abilities, the resource available and the situation at hand".

Through exercises...
...we want to find an answer to these 3 questions:
What went well ?
What didn't go well ?
What still puzzles us ?

Retrospective structure
Set the stage
Gather data
Generate insights
Decide what to do
Close the retrospective

Set the stage
Define the ground rules
Set mobile to silent
We will try not to interrupt
No jokes at the expense of anyone
as well as....
goes through the agenda
define the goals

Gather data
Identify the important events happened during the retrospective
Use artifacts like burndown charts, documents, meeting minutes etc.

Timeline
Simon Baker
http://www.flickr.com/photos/agileinaction/255135338/in/set-72157594512572071/

Generate insights
Mine the timeline looking for useful information
you can...
Cluster the stickies
Put dots to prioritize
Simon Baker
http://www.flickr.com/photos/agileinaction/255135338/in/set-72157594512572071/

Decide what to do
Two or three root causes
Identify things that make the difference !!

From the facilitator point of view...
Preparation
Leading the retrospective
Closure e follow-up

Preparation
Find the topics of the retrospective
Decide the exercises
Prepare the room
Attention to details !! (do we need markers ? Flip charts ? Stickers ?)

Leading the retrospective
Facilitator vs team member role
Handle different personalities
Handle different cultures
Attitude

Closure
Always identify actions as outcomes of the retrospective
but...do we have enough energy for this ?

Bibliography
Norman Kerth
Project Retrospectives: A handbook for team reviews

Bibliography(2)
Ester Derby, Diana Larsen
Agile Retrospectives: making good teams great

Are you ready for your first retrospective ?
creates team of four people
take a scenario
each member of the team leads one stage of the retrospective (set the stage, gather data, generate insights, closure)
...let's play !!

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Retrospectives Techniques

by Luca Grulla

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