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Ben Linders Advies
Valuable Agile RetrospectivesBoekpresentatieAgile Holland / Agile Consortium, September 1, 2014
Ben Linders Advies

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Ben Linders Advies
On the agenda today …
•“What” and “why” of Retrospectives
•Valuable Agile Retrospectives: The Making of …

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Agile, Lean, Quality & Continuous Improvement
Retrospectives Facilitator, Agile Coach/Mentor,
Agile, CMMI & People-CMM Assessor
Freelance Editor on Enterprise Agile for InfoQ.com
Who is Ben Linders?
Co-Author Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives Waardevolle Agile Retrospectives
(Available in many languages)
Author: What Drives Quality
Buy on Leanpub, Amazon, Lulu or Barnes & Noble

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Agile Retrospectives
Practice for teams to reflect on their way of working and to continuously become better in what they do
Focus upon
•Team
•Self organizing
•Collaboration
•Value
What is an Agile Retrospectives

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History of Retrospectives
•Project Evaluations & Post Mortems
•Project Retrospectives Norm Kerth 2001
•Agile Retrospectives Esther Derby & Diana Larsen 2006
Agile Manifesto (2001), 12th Principle:
At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.
How I Started with Agile Retrospectives

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Why Retrospectives?
To help teams to solve problems and improve themselves!
•Increase Value of Agile
•Make existing processes more Agile
•Becoming Agile and Lean
•Less resistance to Change

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Leading Retrospectives
Roles
•Facilitator – Servant Leader
•Coach – Support Change
•Manager – Arrange for Change
All roles are needed
Play the game
Action is in the interaction

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Business Value
Agile retrospectives help teams learn and improve, and increase their business value to their customers and the organization
Getting more Business Value:
•Expectations
•Limit Actions
•Follow up on Actions
Getting Business Value out of Agile Retrospectives

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Expectations for Retrospectives
•Collaboration & Teamwork
•Development Process
•Velocity / Productivity
•Team Morale
•Product Quality
•Lead Time
•Costs

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Toolbox of Retrospective Exercises
•Teams are different
•Needs vary in time
•Deliver more value for Teams
You can plan a retrospective meeting, and think about the technique that you want to use, but be open to change it on the spot whenever needed.
Toolbox of Retrospective Techniques

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Retrospective Exercises
•Asking questions
•One-word retrospective
•Root Cause Analysis
•Timeline
•Flow and Energy
•Asking Why?
•Strenghts (Solution Focused)
•Perfection game
•Action priorities
•Retrospective of Retrospectives
•Teams with multiple customers
Book with Agile Retrospective Exercises

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Retrospectives Book
Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives
By Luis Gonçalves & Ben Linders
Dutch: Waardevolle Agile Retrospectiveshttps://leanpub.com/gettingvalueoutofagileretrospectives_NL
Download from InfoQ or Leanpub
Buy on Amazon or Lulu
Mailinglist: eepurl.com/Mem7H

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Book Facts
1st edition: December 19, 2013: eBook Leanpub & InfoQ
2nd edition: July 10, 2014: paperback Amazon, Lulu, etc
Leanpub subscribers: 500 in 3 months, 1000 in 5 months, now 1344
InfoQ downloads:> 4500++
Reviews: Goodreads 4,08 Amazon 4.8
Bestseller:#9 on Agile #3 on Business & Economics
Interviews:SPaMCAST Collaboration Superpowers

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Value & Price
Suggested price $9,99: what we think is the real value
Readers decide what they would like to pay:
•Download for free
•Pay suggested price
•Pay us more
based on value they expect from reading and using book
15% of readers paid for the book (voluntary!) most paid suggested price -> this book has value!

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The Making of …
A journey about writing and self-publicing books.
•How it all started
•Writing the book … remotely
•Translating withs worldwide teams
•What we learned
Waarde Leveren met Agile

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Travel Partner
Meet Luis Gonçalves
Agile Coach, Co-Author, Speaker & Blogger
lmsgoncalves.com
@lgoncalves1979

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Publishing Partner
InfoQ.com
Facilitating the spread of knowledge and innovation in enterprise development
Minibooks
Editor on Agile

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How I met Luis

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Getting to Know Each Other
Connecting via Twitter, LinkedIn, email, and Skype
Our goals
•Share experiences with Retrospective
•Connect with peers all around the world
•Learn and discover new things and WoW
•Have fun 

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Plan & Contract
Minibook proposal:
•Target Audience
•What will the book bring them?
•Draft outline & blog posts
•Book Properties
•Author Bio’s
•Ok from InfoQ
•Memorandum of Understanding

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Timeline
Jan 2013: First ideas on writing a book
Feb 2013: Book proposal
Mar 2013: Proposal accepted, gathering blog posts
Apr-Jul 2013: Writing new blog posts
Aug 2013: Announcing bookconverting blog posts to book chapters
Sep 2013: Book cover, writing supporting chapters
Oct 2013: Foreword, book review
Nov 2013: Rework based on review, foreword by Esther Derby, final reviews
Dec 2013: Publication

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Writing Tools
•Leanpub: Book generation & publishing
•MarkdownPad 2: Editing
•Dropbox: Manuscript sharing
•Trello: Taskboard
•Google Docs, Sheets: DoD, Terminology, etc

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Remote Collaboration
•Asynchrone communication, mostly email & Google docs
•Skype calls
•Trigger if something is urgent
•Inform if (un)available
Luis and I have met face 2 faceonly one time on April 10 20143 months after book was published!

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What makes it work?
•Trust
•Openness
•Discipline
•Respect
•Gratitude
•Perseverance

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Translations
Help teams all around the world to do Valuable Agile Retrospectives
Available in:
•Nederlands: Waardevolle Agile Retrospectives
•Español: Obteniendo valor de las Retrospectivas ágiles
•Francais: Tirer profit des rétrospectives agiles
•Japanese: アジャイルふりかえりから価値を生み出す 日本語版
Ongoing and future translations: Deutsch, Chinese, Italiano, русский and Português

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Translation Teams
•Volunteering professionals
•Self-organized (agile)
•Distributed – Remote working
Learn retrospective exercises
Work in a distributed agile team
Recognition
Translations of Getting Value out of Agile Retrospective

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Dutch Team
Douwe Attema, Berend van Duijvenvoorde, Angelo Hulshout, Sabina Renshof, Jan Toes, Jacques van Vessem, Jelle de Vries

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Way of Working
•Invite via Social Media
•Emails & Skype calls
•Agree Conditions
•Definition of Done
•Trello board
•Terminology
•Do Retrospectives
Retrospective Findings
•Do a Kick-Off
•Supply tool info
•Start with terminology
•Virtual coffee machine

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Time & Place Dispersed Team
•Kanban (no Sprints)
•Book author = Product Owner & Scrum Master/Coach
•Members contribute when they have time/energy
•Communication and teambuilding on Trello board
Core qualities NL team
•Helpful
•Aim for consensus
•Efficient
•Structured
•Innovative
•Service Oriented
•Dedicated

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Discount Real Agile Value
40% korting Nederlandstalige eBook Waardevolle Agile Retrospectives. Nu voor maar $5.99 (+/- €4,49) i.p.v. $9.99!!!
eBook downloaden:
•http://www.benlinders.com/shop/gettingvalueoutofagileretrospectives_nl/ met coupon “RealAgileValue”
•http://leanpub.com/gettingvalueoutofagileretrospectives_NL/c/RealAgileValue
Paperback edities:
•NL Waardevolle Agile Retrospectives: Webshop van BenLinders.com
•EN Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives: O.a. bij Lulu, Amazon.com en Barnes & Noble. Voor NL via Amazon.de (gratis verzending!).

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Ben Linders Advies
Questions?
benlinders@gmail.com
@BenLinders
www.benlinderswww.linkedin.com/in/benlinders
www.BenLindersAdvieswww.facebook.com/BenLindersAdvies
www.comwww.benlinders.com
Ben Linders Advies

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Ben Linders Advies
ContactContact
Ben Linders
Senior Consultant
info@cominfo@BenLinders.com
@BenLinders
www.benlinderswww.linkedin.com/in/benlinders
www.BenLindersAdvieswww.facebook.com/BenLindersAdvies
www.comwww.benlinders.com

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Background Information

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Prime Directive
“Regardless of 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 resources available, and the situation at hand.”

Norm Kerth http://www.retrospectives.com/
Create an Open Culturewhere team member Speak Upwith Respect for each otherto Learn and Improve
Soft Skills Matter

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Becoming Agile and Lean
Ask yourself:
•How Agile are you?
•Where do you want to becomemore Agile, and why?
•What can you do next?
Journey to Become Agile and Lean

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Assessing yourself
•Readiness
•Agile / Scrum Practices
•Culture & Mindset
•Agile Fluency
•Roadmaps for Adoption
•Maturity
Agile Self-Assessment

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Agile Process Improvement
Expected benefits:
•Collaboration PI team and stakeholders
•Deploy (over define) processes
•Adopt to changes
•Incrementaly, ROI
•Learn to work Agile
Process Improvement: The Agile Way

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Golden Rules for PI
•Dare to share, Early & frequently
•The result depends on team – Not individuals
•The one who starts something is not necessarily the one to finish it
•The one’s working on a task are the right people
•You may critique anything, but never criticize anyone
Golden Rules for Agile Process Improvement

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Agile using the People CMM
Implementing Agile with the People-CMM

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Resistance to Agile?
•Talk with them
•Listen what they have to say
•Take them seriously
•Ask why and how
Resistance = Information!
Dealing with Resistance

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Articles on Retrospectives
•Retrospectives Benefits: Changes that Stick
•Designing Valuable Retrospectives
•Retrospectives for Teams with Multiple Customers
•Getting Feedback with the Perfection Game
•Book about Valuable Agile Retrospectives
•Sustainable Improvement through Agile Retrospectives
•How to Adopt Agile Retrospectives
•Getting Business Value out of Agile Retrospectives
•Asking Why?
•Improving Collaboration in Agile Projects with the Retrospective of Retrospectives
•Using Solution Focused in a Strengths Based Retrospective
•Retrospective Benefits: Power to the Team
•Getting to the Root Causes of Problems in a Retrospective
•Feelings Matter in Agile Retrospectives
•Retrospective Benefits: Actions by the Team
•How I Started with Agile Retrospectives

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Articles on Effective Agile
•Self-assessing how Agile you are
•Working in a Sustainable Pace
•Becoming Agile and Lean
•Succes Factors for Using Scrum and Getting Benefits
•Process Improvement: The Agile Way
•Golden Rules for Agile Process Improvement
•How to deal with Resistance when Implementing Agile
•Managing Projects with Agile Teams
•Agile Project Management
•Establishing and Maintaining Stable Teams
•Getting Business Value out of Agile Retrospectives
•Sharing Knowledge is Power
•Are your Professionals Empowered?