Agile Retrospective by Manohar Prasad Topics which are covered - Agile Manifesto Agile Principles Scrum Values What is Retrospective Why Retrospectives How to perform Retrospectives Best Retrospective Practices Best Retrospective Methods

1. Agile Retrospective
Manohar Prasad, PMP®, PMI-ACP®, CSP® SAFe® (SSM, POPM), ICP-ACC®

2. Agenda
 What is retrospective
 Why retrospectives
 How to perform retrospectives
 Best Practices
 Best Methods
 QnA

3. Agile Manifesto

4. Empirical

5. Agile Principles

6. Scrum Values

7. What is Retrospective?
 A retrospective is a meeting where a team examines how it’s working together with the goal
of improving their future collaborations.
 Agile teams perform retrospectives at the end of sprints – which are time boxes in which
teams complete a set amount of work.
 Retrospectives give teams information about what went well and what didn’t that they can
use to improve their next sprints.

8. Why Retrospectives?
 Creates a safe space for team members to share valuable insights and feedback
 Allows the team to identify potential pitfalls at an early stage and resolve them
 Teams can identify small, incremental changes that can cast a huge impact on the overall
product
 Teams can speak their minds and their opinions are heard and respected
 Teams discuss the challenges and address them as a set of action items and commit
 Collaborations improve trust among the team members
Be clear about why you are doing it

9. How to perform Retrospective?

10. Best Practices
 Set the stage. This is the perfect time for showing off your work done.
 Running your agile retrospectives online? Why not have a group bonding activity where
everyone cooks their own cup cake recipe for the meeting and shares a treat.
 Ask everyone to think about the last sprint and say the top 3 to 5 things that they worked
on. They can then move things into the relevant column based on whether or not they
think they spent too little, too much, or just enough time on it.
 Go through the list and ask people to share their reasons for why they listed something
under each heading and capture learnings and insights.
 Given that this is a time centric agile retrospective, don’t forget to use the timer for each
stage and create your own time box recipe for your online retrospective.
 If running your meeting digitally, use a video conferencing tool to give that personal
touch. Doing things digitally allows you to collect ideas, vote and comment anonymously.
 Capture items that will help improve time estimations or time allocations going forward.

11. Questions to be asked during Retrospective
 What went well?
 What didn’t go well?
 What ideas do we have for next time?
 How will we implement these actions?

12. Sprint Retrospective Model

13. 1. Quick Retrospective

14. 2. MAD SAD GLAD
 Pinpointing our emotions can be powerful, and that’s exactly what this retrospective tool asks
your agile team members to do.
 Everybody will take time to write their observations about the last sprint on sticky notes. Then,
they’ll place them in the appropriate section of the whiteboard based on how that observation
makes them feel: mad, sad, or glad.

15. 3. Start Stop Continue
 A good retrospective isn’t just about having a conversation – it’s about identifying action items
you can use to improve your next sprint.
 You and the rest of the team will review your latest sprint and identify actions that you should
start doing, stop doing, and continue doing in future sprints.

16. 4. 4 L’s
 The four L’s stand for liked, learned, lacked, and longed for. You and your scrum team will focus
on one L at a time, and then brainstorm elements of the previous sprint that fit in that
category.
 What did you like about your last sprint? What did you learn? What went wrong (meaning,
what did you lack)? These seemingly simple questions can inspire a great conversation and
reveal a lot of findings you can use to improve your next sprint.

17. 5. Sailboat
 The Agile team will compare your last sprint to a sailboat and identify what propelled it forward
(like wind) and what held it back (like anchors). They’ll jot their observations on sticky notes
and place them accordingly on the picture of the sailboat that’s on your whiteboard – either on
the sail (for wind) or below the boat (for anchors).

18. 6. SWOT
 SWOT – it stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Look back at your
previous retrospective, identify its strengths and weaknesses, and pinpoint opportunities and
threats that you can address in your next sprint. Plot them on your whiteboard accordingly.

19. 7. Starfish
 This retrospective format challenges your development team to go beyond the surface of what
went well and what didn’t. Your team will brainstorm observations from your sprint that fall
into the following five categories (like the five points of a starfish):
 What you should keep doing
 What you should do less of
 What you should do more of
 What you should stop doing
 What you should start doing
 Like with most of the other retrospective ideas, you’ll need to group similar themes and decide
which ones should be actioned on in your next sprint.

20. 8. KALM
 With this retrospective technique, you’ll divide your whiteboard into four areas: keep, add,
more, less. You and your team will reflect on your previous sprint and generate ideas and
observations to be placed on the board:
 Keep: Something the team is doing well and should continue doing.
 Add: Something new that the team should incorporate in the next sprint.
 More: Something that’s bringing value to the team, and you should do more of.
 Less: Something that isn’t going as well, and you should do less of.

21. Questions?
Any questions?

22. Thank you!
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