How To Do A Retrospective + (Step-by-Step Playbook and Example)

What went well What to improve Action items
Good Collaboration
Willingness to work on new tech stack
New team member on-boarding going
well
Have meeting mid-sprint to discuss
future stories
Good pairing work was done despite
remote work.
E2E automation has really improved
things
How To Do A Retrospective
Before picking any story, each story
should have clear acceptance criteria.
Fewer meetings more coding, Period!
The team should pick more non-
functional requirements to improve code
base
Each story should be divided & people
assigned to it – not everyone on same
story
Use a more accurate way of estimating
story size – what we use isn’t accurate.
Need to have more team building events
Try to eliminate unnecessary meetings
Find more accurate ways to estimate our
stories
Guarantee all stories have clear
acceptance criteria before picking them
up

What is a retrospective?
Retro definition:
A retrospective is a meeting where you get together
with your development team to discuss the last
sprint. The goal is to self-inspect, identify
improvement opportunities, and then create a plan
on how to put that improvement into practice.
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Normally the last sprint we’re referring to is the last
1 week, 2 weeks, or 1 month of work. This meeting
is typically timeboxed e.g. you allocate maybe an
hour to an hour and a half to discuss the work.

What is done in this meeting? How does it go?
Typical questions asked:
There are three major things covered in this
meeting: “What actions would you start?”;
“What actions would you stop?”, and “What
actions would you continue doing?”.
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These three questions can come in different
forms, but it all boils down to, “What went
well?” and “What can we improve?”
Went well To improve

Why some people are against retros
Why some people are against them:
Some managers and other individuals are against doing
retrospectives. Some believe it is a waste of time and
doesn’t bring value to the team. Others think that taking
7 or 8 members of the team and sitting them in a room
just to discuss the last couple of weeks of work is a real
financial drain, and a costly meeting.
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Why you should do retros
Individual and team expression:
Another great reason to do a retrospective is that it
allows the team to express themselves. This could be
the good, the bad, or the ugly, but it is still important
that the team, product manager, and scrum master
know what the overall sentiment is. These meetings can
be extremely important and unearth certain things
about projects, team dynamics, and work in general.
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Get to know your team better:
From a PM’s perspective, one of the great things about doing
retros is that it is a great way to get to know your team better.
This could be: What they like to work on, specific projects,
tasks, hobbies and what they think of the work. Another
important thing to know is what confuses people. What are
things the team has trouble with? What are some of their
pain points or that causes them to lose focus on the job?
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Trust building:
The more you work with your team, through both the
good and the bad times, you will grow closer together.
There is an element of trust that builds. Doing retros is
a great way to build trust.
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Create a blameless space where valuable feedback
can be obtained:
One rule to be followed is, you should not go pointing
the finger at other teammates during a retro. It’s not a
blame game. But it is a place where you should collect
valuable feedback and help make the team more
productive.
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Address current wins and challenges:
As mentioned earlier, retros can reveal what went well,
and what didn’t. Examining what went well can help you
continue doing what you’re doing and harness these
positive outcomes. The same applies for what didn’t go
well. Discussing what didn’t go well can help create
valuable lessons learned so you can avoid them in the
future.
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Look for ways to improve the processes:
Teams can always find scope for improvement on their projects/tasks.
One of the areas is process improvement. This could be e.g. the amount
of work taken on at one time (WIP), and then controlling the throughput,
or the ways that the team conducts refinements, or a series of other
things. The process can always be a little bit better and can improve.
Team maturity building: The more a team works together and tries to
improve itself, the more mature they become. Retros can help facilitate
this.
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Retro Playbook – Getting Started - Prep
In-Company/In-Person Retro
A meeting spot booked for at
least 1 hour – it can be in an
office room
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Supplies – stickies, markers, paper,
whiteboard, timer
Label the columns – Start, Stop,
Continue, or What went well, what
to improve? Action Items.
It can be an online meeting like a
Zoom or Google hangout etc.
Online Retro
You can use an electronic board
like FunRetro.
Label the columns – Start,
Stop, Continue, or What went
well, what to improve?

Retro Playbook – Getting Started
Set the stage - get everyone on the same page
Leave your egos at the door – come ready for a healthy discussion.
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Don’t make it personal – focus on the issues, not the person.
State the time period - specifically say the time period you are referring
to, most likely the last sprint, unless you are working on a different type
of project (a non-agile one). If it is not agile, you could do it for a specific
deliverable that was accomplished, or over a period, or another criterion
that has been agreed upon.
Focus on ways you as a team can improve.

Retro Playbook – Went Well
What went well:
Have each of the team members have green sticky notes
where they can jot down multiple things that went well
during the sprint. If this meeting is taking place online,
each person should log in on their machine or phone and
get ready to fill in the notes under the respective column.
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Make sure it is only one idea per sticky. It is OK to have a board and a
column full of stickies. We’ll sort those after.
The same applies for online boards. Make sure it is one idea per tab
created.
Add 1 Idea per
sticky

Retro Playbook – Went Well
What went well:
Since some stickies may have recurring ideas or may be similar, there
should always be someone, a moderator or even the scrum master to
group similar sticky notes or duplicates. This helps to organize the
column.
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Once the team has finished writing out stickies about what went well,
you can move onto the next column. One thing to keep in mind is to
timebox each section. Maybe 5-10 minutes on each column to fill out
the stickies.

Retro Playbook – To Improve
What needs improvement:
Grab pink/red sticky notes. Focus on the things that need
to be tightened up or could use some improvement. Same
process as you did before, but in a different column.
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Focus on the work, not specific people. E.g. avoid saying
something like John was constantly absent last sprint and
this set us back, or he wasn’t pulling his weight in this last
sprint and now we are really behind. Instead, aim for
things such as, the team took on too much work or
underestimated the stories for the sprint.
Red/pink
stickies for
improvement
areas

Retro playbook – Discussion
Now that you and the team have filled out the what went well and the what
needs improvement columns, have a short discussion about each sticky
note, that way everyone is on the same page. Once you have gone down
the list of items, it’s time to vote on them.
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What went well What to improve
Good Collaboration
New team member on- boarding going
well

Retro Playbook – Voting
Take a few minutes with the team to vote on the
most important items to act on. Make sure you
tell the team how many votes they have, e.g. 3
votes. If you have stickies on the wall, you could
do dot voting (each member could use a dot as
a vote on the sticky note). If it is an online retro
board, you could just click the thumbs up button.
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Stories should
have clear
acceptance
criteria
before
picking.
Better/more
accurate
ways to
estimate
stories
Imagine you have just finished voting on the
items. Now you can clearly see which items the
team has deemed as priority items to focus on
to improve moving forward.

Retro Playbook – Action Items
Action Items:
After the team prioritizes the action items, it is time to decide what to do
with each item. Suppose that one of the most voted/agreed upon areas
of improvement was to always have the designs ready for the sprint or
have less meetings so the team can code more. Let’s take the second
one. Are there specific meetings that the team takes part in but add little
to no value? These might be possible candidates to eliminate. This
would be an action item to investigate further.
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Good Collaboration
Willingness to work on new
tech stack
New team member on-
boarding going well
Have meeting mid-sprint to
discuss future stories
Good pairing work was done
despite remote work.
E2E automation has really
improved things
Team CareerPrep - Retrospective

Good Collaboration
well
Have meeting mid sprint to discuss
future stories
remote work.
things
base
story

Good Collaboration
well
Have meeting mid sprint to discuss
future stories
remote work.
things
Less meetings more coding, Period!
base
story
Try to eliminate unnecessary meetings
Find more accurate ways to estimate our
stories
Guarantee all stories have clear
acceptance criteria before picking them
up

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EnglishInterviews Philip Chesney www.AgiFall.com
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How To Do A Retrospective + (Step-by-Step Playbook and Example)

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