This document discusses agile retrospectives, which are special meetings where teams gather after completing work to inspect their development methods and teamwork. The key steps discussed are setting the stage, gathering data, generating insights, deciding what to do, and closing the retrospective. Various activities are suggested for each step, such as timeline and triple nickels for gathering data, and brainstorming and fishbone analysis for generating insights. The goal is for teams to continuously learn and improve their productivity, quality and capacity.

1. AGILE
RETROSPECTIVES

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3. Introduction
• Special meeting where team gathers after completing an increment of work to
inspect and adopt development methods and teamwork
• The process of retrospective is at the heart of Scrum (Inspect and Adapt), XP (fix
it when it breaks) and Lean Software Development (Kaizen or Continuous
Improvement)
• Retrospective enables:
 Whole team learning
 Focuses not only on Dev process but also on the team and team issues
• Retrospective improves:
 Productivity, capability, quality and capacity
• Team is empowered to make local decisions
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4. Retrospective steps
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5. Set the stage
• Helps to focus on work at hand, expalins the goal of of the session and
contributes to creating an atmosphere where people feel comfortable
discussing issues
• Try to establish values of your team as well as working agreements
• For example: XP teams are using simplicity, feedback, courage and
respect as their core team values
• Working agreements: meeting, respect, impediments, make
commitments as a team, incomplete stories are not good
 Activities to Set The Stage: Check In, Focus On/Focus Off, ESVP
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6. Gather data
• Creates a shared picture of what happened
• The solving process begins by collecting observations, facts and
findings
• Inputs: events, metrics, stories completed
• Activities to Gather Data: Timeline, Triple Nickels
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7. The Timeline
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8. Generate insights
• Eveluate the data from the previous step and derive meaningful insights
from it
• It helps us understand the implications of our findings and discussions
• Activities to Generate Insight: Brainstorming (Free for All, Round Robin,
Quiet Writing), Five Why‘s, Fishbone Analysis
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9. Fishbone Analysis
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10. Decide what to do
• The last problem solving step where we have to decide what to do
about the problems we have identified
• We identify highest priority action items, detailed plans, and set
measurable goals
• Activities to decide what to do: short subjects (start doing, stop doing,
do more of, do less of...), SMART goals, circle of questions
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11. Close the retrospective
• The final steps, where we have an opportunity to reflect on what
happened during the meeting and express our appreciation to each
other
• We can also summarize what we have decided to keep or change, and
where we can make the best use of our time down the road
• Activities to close the retrospective: Plus/Delta, ROTI, appreciations
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12. Jean Tabaka self-assesement model
• Self-organization
• Empowered to make decisions
• Belief in vision and success
• Commited team
• Trust each other
• Participatory decision making
• Consensus-driven
• Constructive disagreement
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13. Length of the retrospective
• 2-hour session example:
1. Set the stage 6 min
2. Gather data 40 min
3. Generate insight 25 min
4. Decide what to do 20 min
5. Close the retrospective 20 min
No matter what the rule says, feel free to adjust the time according to your
needs and the problem you‘re faced with
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14. • Agile Retrospectives – Making Good Teams Great
• Retromat - Inspiration & plans for (agile) retrospectives
http://plans-for-retrospectives.com/
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15. Q&A
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16. www.agile.ba
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