Slides from a workshop at Agile in the City Bristol

1. @ewebber
Welcome, take a seat
Introduce yourself to the people
at your table, talk about your last
standup or retrospective

2. Are your stand ups and
retrospectives really working?
Agile in the city Bristol 2016
Emily Webber
@ewebber
emilywebber.co.uk / tacitlondon.com

3. @ewebber
Standups

4. @ewebber
Who has stand ups?

5. @ewebber
Keep your hand up
if they are working
really well for you

6. Why do you have stand ups?
@ewebber

7. Stand-ups are a mechanism to regularly
synchronise so that teams…
• share understanding of goals
• coordinate efforts
• share problems and improvements
• identify as a team
@ewebber
martinfowler.com/articles/itsNotJustStandingUp.html

8. @ewebber
Standup formats

9. • What did you do yesterday?
• What are you doing today?
• What is blocking you?
@ewebber
Scrum style stand up

10. @ewebber
Story C
Story E
Story G
Story D
Story B
Story H
Story I
Story A
Story F
Backlog In progress Done
Walking the wall

11. @ewebber
I need 5 volunteers

12. Answer the three scrum stand-up questions
• What did you do yesterday?
• What are you doing today?
• What is blocking you?
@ewebber

13. What behaviours were they
demonstrating?
@ewebber

14. What are some other bad
behaviours you have seen at
standup?
@ewebber

15. @ewebber
Some tips to help with
effective stand ups

16. Think about your update in advance
@ewebber
Preparation
Don't talk about ALL the thingsPrioritisation
Talk to the team, not to the leaderPeople
Raise issues and help each otherProblems
The 4 P’s of effective stands-ups

17. @ewebber
Retrospectives

18. @ewebber
Who has
retrospectives?

19. @ewebber
Keep your hand up
if they are working
really well for you

20. Why do you have
retrospectives?
@ewebber

21. At regular intervals, the team reflects on
how to become more effective, then tunes
and adjusts its behavior accordingly
@ewebber
agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

22. @ewebber
What are some of your
challenges with retrospectives?

23. @ewebber
Retrospective
formats

24. @ewebber
4Ls
Liked / Learned
Lacked / Longed for
Start Stop
Continue
More of
Less of

25. @ewebber
Some tips to help
with effective
retrospectives

26. @ewebber
PhotobySankarshanMukhopadhyay
Does your team feel
safe to talk?
• check ins
• safety checks
• individual and group activities
e.g. one to ones, quite time

27. The 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
@ewebber

28. @ewebber
PhotobyAsimChaudhuri
Are you following up
on actions?
• are you prioritising?
• are they achievable?
• do they have owners?
• are they on your board?

29. @ewebber
PhotobyThomasHawk
Are they varied,
interesting and useful?
• are they right for the situation
• do you change them often enough?
• do you vary when they happen?
• do they have positive as well as
negative points?
• do you ask if they are working?

30. @ewebber
Photobygomagoti
Are the right people in
the room?
• is the group small enough to
make decisions
• are the right people in the
room to make decisions

31. @ewebber
infoq.com/articles/rising-continuous-retrospective

32. What will you change
about your stand and
retrospectives?
@ewebber

33. Further reading
Retromat plans-for-retrospectives.com/index.html
Retrospective wiki retrospectivewiki.org
Agile Retrospectives Making good teams great Diana Larsen and Esther Derby
Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives Luis Gonçalves and Ben Linders
Fun Retrospectives Taina Caetano, Paulo Caroli and Glauber Ramos
Fifty Quick Ideas To Improve Your Retrospectives Ben Williams and Tom Roden
The Retrospective Handbook Patrick Kua
Agile Retrospective Kickstarter Alexey Krivitsky
Retrospectives for Organizational Change Jutta Eckstein
@ewebber

34. Thank you.
Emily Webber
@ewebber
emilywebber.co.uk / tacitlondon.com