This document discusses agile retrospectives, including why they are important, what they involve, and how to conduct them successfully. Retrospectives allow teams to continuously improve by reflecting on what went well and what could be improved in the last sprint or iteration. The key aspects covered are preparing an agenda and materials, gathering feedback from the team, analyzing the feedback to select a few key items to action, and planning follow-ups to ensure improvements are implemented. Conducting regular retrospectives helps teams enhance their processes and productivity over time.

1. Agile retrospectives: Why, What and How
Dmitriy Viktorov
AgileDays’10, St.Petersburg, September 17th 2010
Protecting the irreplaceable | f-secure.com

2. Postmortems in pre-Agile days
2 21 September,

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4. When
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5. How to make retrospective successful
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6. Preparation
• Place
• Participants
• Agenda / goals
• Toolbox
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7. Conducting the retrospective
• Check in (warm-up)
• Collecting feedback
• Facilitation techniques
• Lead people, time, yourself
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8. Check-in & Warm-up
• Get participants in the right mood
• Code of conduct
• Make agenda and goals visible
• Share context, display data,
timeline
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9. Project timeline (example)
Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar
Beta 1 Beta 2 RC1 RC2 RTM
• 2 more sprints added
• Milestones:
• Beta 1 – the end of November,
• Beta 2 – the end of December,
• RC1 – the end of January,
• RC2 – the end of February,
• RTM – the mid/end of March
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10. Sprint statistics (example)
Sprint PBL items Capacity Work effort
# Total Done Undone SWE+QE Total Done Undone
S1 17 10 7 97.9 99 52 47
S2 17 13 4 94 90 60 30
S3 21 20 1 89.3 91 83 8
S4 16 14 2 123.2 122 85 37
S5 20 14 6 110.2 112 64 48
S6 17 10 7 91.2 97 60 37
S7 21 13 8 116.6 114 68 46
S8 10 7 3 80.5 57 38 19
• Statistics based on PBL data
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11. Bug trend report (example)
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12. How to gather feedback
• Classic Scrum
• Starfish
• Keep, Drop, Fix, Try
• 3L’s (4L’s)
• Checklist
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13. Assessment form (example)
Sprint 2
Sprint 7
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14. Leading the retrospective
• Time
• Start and finish on time
• Timebox activities
• Have breaks
• People
• Personalities (quiet, overbeating, passive, aggressive)
• Introverts vs. extroverts
• You
• Facilitator vs. team member
• Let others talk
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15. Analyze feedback
• Group similar items
• Separate team and company level items
• Root cause analysis
• Select top 3/5/10 items to work on
• Discuss actions, owners and schedule
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16. Group and separate items
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17. Group and separate items
Group 1 Group 2 Group 3
Group 4 Group 5 Group 6
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18. Group and separate items
TEAM COMPANY
Group 1 Group 3 Group 2
Group 4 Group 6 Group 5
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19. Root cause analysis
• Interview/questions
• 5 Why’s
• Fishbone
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20. Decide what, who and when
• Identify things that make difference
• Owner is not always the one who will do it
• Start with near-term improvements
• Get support for long-term improvements
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21. Closing the retrospective
• End in positive way
• Appreciation
• Celebrate (cake, champagne, fireworks)
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22. Follow up
• Share retrospective results
• Make comments and actions visible
• Add user stories, tasks to sprint/product backlog
• Check the status regularly
• Review on next retrospective
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23. Smells
• Reporting to management
• Offline retrospective (by email)
• Only a few participants
• Everybody is happy
• Blame game
• Nobody talks about elephant
• Looking for silver bullets
• Retrospective in the team room
• Too short retrospective meeting
• Facilitator doesn’t facilitate
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