The power of funny retrospectives - Speaker: Ms. Linh Pham

The Power of funny
RETROSPECTIVES

www.axonactive.vnfb.com/AxonActiveVietNam
Phạm Thùy Linh
Scrum Master at Axon Active Viet Nam
The Power of funny RETROSPECTIVES
Introduction

• What is retrospective?
• Which problems do we have?
• Why do we need funny retrospectives?
• Example retrospectives
• Workshop
Agenda

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how
to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
its behavior accordingly.
agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
Improving

Agile Retrospectives
How to mine the
experience of your
software development
team continually
throughout the life of
the project.

Reflect and find a better way
Suspendisse potenti
Here is Edward Bear,
coming downstairs now,
bump, bump, bump, bump,
on the back of his head,
behind Christopher Robin.
It is, as far as he knows,
the only way of coming downstairs,
but sometimes he feels that
there is another way,
if only he could stop bumping for a
moment
and think of it.
A. A. Milne
Winnie the Pooh

Where retrospective is in the Scrum cycle?

• All team members reflect on the past sprint
• Make continuous process improvements
• Two main questions are asked in the sprint retrospective:
• What went well during the sprint?
• What could be improved in the next sprint?
• Time box
Retrospective: What is it?

No Naming, no Blaming. But praise is always welcome!
Kerth’s Prime Directive:
Regardless of what we discover, we must understand
and truly believe that everyone did the best job he/she could,
given what was known at the time, his/her skills and abilities, the
resources available, and the situation at hand.
What a retrospective isn’t

Agile retrospectives are about getting ready for the
next iteration, not about solving all the problems the team has.
You may not be able to solve a given problem, but you can
always set up a small experiment.
Retrospectives GOAL

• Team
• No Product Owner or Managers
(except they are invited by the Team)
• Dedicated retrospectives
(Testers only, Devs only are OK too)
Who should attend?

• Try not to interrupt (use a talking Token)
• Speak from your own perspective and not speak for
anyone else
• No jokes at the expense of anyone in the room
Ground Rules

• What went well during the sprint?
• What could be improved in the next sprint?
What are the driving questions?

• Explorer:
Eager to dive in and research what did and didn't work
and how to improve.
• Shopper:
Positive attitude. Happy if one good things comes out.
• Vacationer:
Reluctant to actively take part but the retro beats the
regular work.
• Prisoner:
Only attend because they (feel they) must.
How do participants feel at the retro?

Which problems do we have in retrospectives?
What are the problems?

• Boring retrospective
• Too many non-actionable improvements
• Focus on what can NOT be changed next sprint
What are the problems?

• Find ways of making the developers speak
• Find ways of pointing at the issues
• Find ways so that everybody speaks and has chance to
speak
• Find ways to talk about difficult things without blaming
anyone
• Get ready for a new sprint
• Team Building
Why do we want/need funny retrospectives?

• Sailboat
• Team Radar
• One word
• Fly high kite
• Country map
• Amazon Review
• Etc.
Retrospective Examples

Sailboat
• Allows the Team to identify possible risks and
reminds them where they need to go as a team
• Draw a boat, rocks, clouds, and couple of
islands:
- The islands represent the team’s goals/vision
- The rocks represent the risks they might
encounter along the way
- The anchor on the boat is everything that slows
them down on their journey
- The clouds and
- The wind represent everything that helps them to
reach their goal.

Sailboat

Team Radar
• Let team give grades for each topic of the
last sprint. Use cards from 1 to 10 and let
team show cards all at a time.
- Communication in the team
- Quality of result
- Working technique
- Work load
- Goals of sprint
- Result
- Motivation of team
- Average of sprint.

• Each team member state how they feel about the past iteration
in one word
• Start asking why they feel that way
• To be able to do a one-word retrospective you need to:
- Establish trust and openness.
- Respect people and their feelings.
- Be able to deal with the issues.
One-Word

One-Word

• Identify the good work they have been doing so
far and that they would like to continue doing—this
was the team’s kite.
• Identify team-level impediments that they could
resolve themselves, provided they really work on
them—these were the on-the-ground tangles.
• Identify impediments that need escalation to the
next level because they require support from the
organization or senior management for
resolution—these were the hard-to-reach tangles.
Fly high kite

Fly high kite

Country Map
Suspendisse potenti
• Each group shall draw a map of the
company, with
- How do the borders look?
- Where are mountains, rivers, sea,
roads, highways, lakes, cities, etc.?
- What kind of recommendation should
be included on the map for tourists?
- How should you travel through this
country? Bus, car, motorbike,etc.?
- Which are the neighbour countries?
- Etc. try to gather as much information
as possible on the map

Country Map

Amazon Review
• Let in groups of 2-3 persons
fill out this form thinking
about the last sprint and its
characterics.
• If it would be an amazon
item, how would I advertise
for it?

• Think together and spark
discussion
• Focused, and full of
learning
Amazon Review

Q&A

• Do retrospective about ScrumBreakfast event of AAVN: 15’
- Imagine this event is an Amazon item, how will we advertise
it?
- Fill out the paper, thinking about the ScrumBreakfast event
and its characterics.
- Don’t forget to focus on the goal of a retrospective.
• Presentation (per group) 5’
Retrospective workshop

Demo

• http://www.solutionsiq.com/7-ways-to-make-
retrospectives-fun-and-engaging/
• http://www.plans-for-retrospectives.com/
• http://www.funretrospectives.com/
• Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great! – Esther
Derby and Diana Larsen
• Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives : A Toolbox of
Retrospective Exercises – Luis Gonçalves and Ben Linders
References

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