This document provides guidance on conducting effective retrospective meetings (retros). It emphasizes that retros are important for continuous improvement and should not be taken lightly. It outlines steps for effective retros such as gathering both qualitative and quantitative feedback. It also provides tips for facilitating vibrant discussion, ensuring action items are captured, and involving the entire team including those in different locations. The overall goal is to make retros an engaging process that drives positive change.

1. CONDUCTING MEANINGFUL
RETROS!
Rahul Sudame
CSM, SAFe SPC

2. AGENDA
 Ways of conducting retro
 Inputs on making retros vibrant
 Retros in scaled environment
 Processing retro feedback
 Tips for effective retros

3. SOUNDS FAMILIAR?
Umm, I don’t have
any new point to
add
Lets skip retro
this Sprint
What
happened to
last Sprint’s
feedback?
It’s a waste of
time
Idon’t agree with your
point - Manager

4. IT’S A NOT A CASUAL THING
Retro
Inspect &
Adapt
Cont.
Improvem
ent
Whole
team
learning
Catalyst
for change
Generate
action

5. STEPS OF RETRO

6. QUALITATIVE & QUANTITATIVE
Quantitative
• Did we meet our ‘Sprint Goal’ (Yes/No)?
• Metrics review (Burndown, Velocity, Status of
Items raised in last retro, Defect count etc.)
Qualitative
• 3 Column:
• What worked
• What didn’t
• Items to try
• Team working agreement

7. INNOVATION GAMES FOR RETRO

8. DYSFUNCTIONS ASSESSMENT

9. JOHARI WINDOW

10. ESVP
Team to share their attitude towards Retro:
• Explorer: Eager to discover new ideas
• Shopper: Will be happy to go home with one useful idea
• Vacationer: Not interested, but happy to be away from the daily
grind
• Prisoner: Forced to attend retro

11. OTHER WAYS OF CONDUCTING RETRO
• Individual Feedback (Individual notes)
• Appreciation (Did someone help you?)
• Conceptual (One word)
• Rating (of Sprint on scale of 1 to 5)
• Smiley for the Sprint ( , ,  )
• Dot voting for most impacting item
• Events on Scrum timeline
• Lego Game / Collaboration activities
• Focus on / off chart (E.g. Focus on Dialogue than Debate)

12. DISTRIBUTED RETRO

13. SCALED / RETRO OF RETRO

14. CIRCLES AND SOUP
Classify Feedback items –
• Caused by Agile,
Exposed by Agile, No
related
• People / Process /
Technology
• Team’s control on the
issue & the action

15. RETRO PERFORMANCE CURVE

16. TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE RETROS
 Keep retros vibrant
 Encourage (as well as control ) participation
 Rotate the facilitator role
 Invite external person to facilitate
 Achievable actions and owners in backlog

17. SUMMARY
 Agile Retrospection meeting needs to take
seriously, not an optional activity
 Continuous improvement should be the goal
 ScrumMaster should facilitate healthy discussion
 Make retros exciting
 Engage team members from different locations &
scrum teams at program level

18. Rahul Sudame