The Agile Retrospective is one of the primary feedback loops for a team to drive it's continuous improvement. In this short deck we look at 5W+H of retros. What are they, why are they needed, who needs to attend (and not), when do they need to be run, where (under what conditions) do they need to be run and tips and tricks on how to run a retro.

1. Running Retrospectives

2. Learning Goals
Upon completing this course, you should be able to
1. Recognise why a retrospective is needed
2. Be able to identify the steps to facilitate a retrospective
3. Have a list of key resources to run your own retrospectives
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3. Signposting
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How
Why
What
WhoWhen
Where

4. Why Run a Retrospective?
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5. Agile Manifesto: 12 Principles of Agile
1. Customer satisfaction by early and continuous delivery of valuable software
2. Welcome changing requirements, even in late development
3. Working software is delivered frequently (weeks rather than months)
4. Close, daily cooperation between business people and developers
5. Projects are built around motivated individuals, who should be trusted
6. Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication (co-location)
7. Working software is the primary measure of progress
8. Sustainable development, able to maintain a constant pace
9. Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design
10.Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential
11.Best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams
12.Regularly, the team reflects on how to become more effective, and adjusts
accordingly
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6. Scrum Guide: Sprint Retrospective
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• The Sprint Retrospective is an opportunity for the
Scrum Team to inspect itself and create a plan for
improvements to be enacted during the next Sprint.
• The Sprint Retrospective occurs after the Sprint
Review and prior to the next Sprint Planning.
• The purpose of the Sprint Retrospective is to:
• Inspect how the last Sprint went with regards to people,
relationships, process, and tools;
• Identify and order the major items that went well and
potential improvements; and,
• Create a plan for implementing improvements to the way
the Scrum Team does its work.
• This is a three-hour time-boxed meeting for one-
month Sprints.

7. Six Core Kanban Practices
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VISUALISE THE WORKFLOW
LIMIT WORK IN PROGRESS
MEASURE AND OPTIMISE FLOW
MAKE PROCESS POLICIES EXPLICIT
IMPLEMENT FEEDBACK LOOPS
IMPROVE COLLABORATIVELY, EVOLVE
EXPERIMENTALLY

8. Mike Rother: (Toyota) Kata
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9. Phoenix Project: The 3 Ways of DevOps
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• The First Way – Flow
• Understand and increase the flow of work (L2R)
• The Second Way – Feedback
• Create short feedback loops that enable continuous
improvement (R2)
• The Third Way – Continuous experimentation
and learning
• Create a culture that fosters experimentation, taking
risks and learning
• Create a culture that fosters understanding that
repetition and practice is the prerequisite to mastery

10. What is the purpose / expected outcome / benefit of a
Retrospective?
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11. Lyssa Adkins: Purpose of a Retrospective
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• Inspect and Adapt
A short stop in the action to allow the team to take a
breather and get curious about what happened in the
iteration.
• Look back at how, not what
How the work was done. The degrees of flow, learning and
collaboration in the team
• Identify a few key actions to improve next time
The team work together to brainstorm items to improve.
Then prioritise (dot vote?) and select actions and owners.

12. Jeff Sutherland: Purpose of a Retrospective
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• The “Check” part of the PDCA cycle. The key output
is getting to the “Act” part – the kaizen – which will
actually change the process and make it better next
time.
Plan
DoCheck
Act

13. Luís Gonçalves: Benefits of a Retrospective
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• A Team Energizer / Builder
• Used for people to vent (and hopefully let go of)
their frustrations
• To learn and help the team/company to improve
Reflective Practice
• Create continuous improvement
• Empower teams
• A place to honour or grieve past events
• As a tool to communicate with Management

14. When (how often) should you run a retrospective?
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15. Short Feedback Loops Vs Too Many Meetings
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• The Retro is the primary process analysis / feedback
system for the team for continuous improvement.
The shorter the period between sessions the more
opportunities to improve exist.
• However, process change takes time to demonstrate
results and there is waste in having too many
meetings.
 A retrospective every one to four weeks is sufficient
with an inclination for every two weeks.
 It is possible to have one-off retrospectives after
major events (key project delivery, solving a complex
bug)
FAILURE
Man: Method: Measurement:
Machine:
Mother
Nature:
Materials:
Sort
Set in
Order
Shine
Stand
ardis
e
Sustain

16. Who needs to attend?
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17. Pigs Meeting Only
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Keep the Agile Retrospective for the team, not for management

18. Where to run a retro?
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19. A Safe Place: Vegas or London?
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• Need to be able to create a safe environment for
open communication.
• Usually run in a private venue (meeting room,
sometimes offsite)
• The team need to decide what information is shared
outside the retro:
• Vegas Rules (nothing is shared)
• Chatham House Rules (something was said, but it is not
allowed to say by whom)
• Encourage participation but do not force it.
• Limit public takeaways to be action items, destroy
other records

20. A Safe Place: Prime Directive
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• Prime Directive comes from Norm Kerth’s Project
Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Review
• The purpose of the Prime Directive is to ensure that
a retrospective has the right culture to make it a
positive and result oriented event.
• It makes a retrospective become an effective team
gathering to learn and find solutions to improve the
way of working.
Regardless of what we discover,
we must understand and truly
believe that everyone does the
best job he or she could, given
what was known at the time, his
or her skills and abilities, the
resources available, and the
situation at hand.

21. How to run a retro?
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22. Derby & Larsen: Stages of a Retrospective
1. Set the Stage
Set the purpose,
Gather expectations,
Present working agreement (if one
exists)
Present the Prime Directive
Set the ground rules
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23. Derby & Larsen: Stages of a Retrospective
1. Set the Stage
2. Gather Data
• Quantitative (burn-up, cycle times,
feedback, metrics, “Happiness Metric”).
Usually need to be gathered outside the
meeting
• Qualitative (feelings, opinions, wishes,
gratitude, identified wastes). Usually
gathered as part of the meeting.
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Well Not So Well
Areas to Improve Shout-Outs

24. Derby & Larsen: Stages of a Retrospective
1. Set the Stage
2. Gather Data
3. Generate Ideas
• Interpret the data to identify patterns and
cause and effect
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25. Derby & Larsen: Stages of a Retrospective
1. Set the Stage
2. Gather Data
3. Generate Ideas
4. Decide what to do
• Once the team has agreed on a handful of the
best possible solutions, they need to settle on
just one or two of them to utilise in the coming
iteration and decide on how best to do so.
• The Decision Stage could involve the use of
story cards or backlog items during the
planning process, as this will make it easier to
implement improvement plans during the actual
work that will occur in the next iteration.
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26. Derby & Larsen: Stages of a Retrospective
1. Set the Stage
2. Gather Data
3. Generate Ideas
4. Decide what to do
5. Closing
• Close retrospectives in a proactive,
inspiring, motivating way—the team
will need this sense of momentum to
take into the coming iteration.
• People should walk away with a clear
idea of what is necessary, how is
documented, and what the follow-up
will be.
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27. Tips
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28. A Good Facilitator must
• Not take any sides.
• Create the right environment where
everyone is comfortable to speak
• Clarify Insights
• Think positively
• Be able to choose different exercises
for different situations
• Be able to summarise everything that
happened during the Agile
Retrospective
• Have support to help them grow and
learn.
• Watch out for anti-patterns.
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29. Gathering Feedback - Brainstorming
• Group Brainstorming
1. Focus on quantity
2. Withhold criticism
3. Welcome unusual ideas
4. Combine and improve ideas
Note: can reduce the total number of
ideas
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30. Gathering Feedback - Brainstorming
• Group Brainstorming
• Individual Brainstorming
• When individuals brainstorm on their own, they
generate more ideas (and often better quality ideas)
than groups of people who brainstorm together.
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31. How to Deal with Excessive Negativity
• Six Thinking Hats of De Bono
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32. Useful Links
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• Ammeon’s Retrospective Templates: https://bit.ly/2IG2q1T
• Fun Retrospectives: http://www.funretrospectives.com/category/retrospective/
• TastyCupcakes.org: http://tastycupcakes.org/page/1/?s=Retro&x=0&y=0
• Note – search for “retro”
• Luís Gonçalves https://luis-goncalves.com/agile-retrospectives/
• Resource wiki: http://retrospectivewiki.org
• One of the Free Distributed Retro Tools: https://funretro.github.io/distributed/

33. Picture references
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• Slide 1: https://bit.ly/2s5qPry
• Slide 6: https://bit.ly/2ILvSUg
• Slide 8: https://bit.ly/2IIlZXu
• Slide 13: https://bit.ly/2s9m13p
• Slide 26: https://bit.ly/2GLrT8r
• Slide 29: https://bit.ly/2sdLnxo
• Slide 30: https://bit.ly/2s3H0We
• Slide 31: https://bit.ly/2IKhzPN
https://bit.ly/2s8ZAvf

34. www.ammeon.com Ammeon@ammeon
Thank You
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