Why Should I Have More Than 1 Technique for Retrospectives?

Phone: +1-610-644-2856
Measure. Optimize. Deliver.
softwarevalue.com
Why should I have more than one
technique for retrospectives?
Making Software Value Visible.

©2016 DCG Software Value
Agenda
• About Us
• Why Retrospectives?
• Typical Process
• Obstacles
• List Generation Techniques
• Other Techniques
• Strategic Retrospectives – AgilityHealth Radar
1

©2016 DCG Software Value 2
This We Believe
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©2016 DCG Software Value 3
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Why Retrospectives?
• Retrospectives are part of most methodologies, even though there are many
different terms (e.g. post-implementation reviews or postmortems).
• Each methodology focuses on different nuances. Agile more aggressively
embraces retrospectives than waterfall or iterative frameworks.
• Retrospectives in Agile reflect the adoption of the principle of kaizen (Japanese
for improvement [continuous improvement]):
– Discover what will make the team or organization deliver more value.
– Retrospectives occur when change can actually be applied to the project
to impact the current delivery.
• Brian Wernham, Agile Project Management for Government, noted the UK
DirectGov project used retrospectives to mold how teams worked in order to
maximize delivery productivity.
5

Why Retrospectives?
While many retrospective techniques posit the
questions “what worked well” and “what did not work,”
the real reason to do any retrospective is to identify,
agree on and plan for what can be done better.
6

Typical Process
• Set Up (<20 minutes for a 2 week sprint):
– First, create a safe atmosphere (review Norm Kerth’s “Prime Directive” with the team).
– Ground the team by focusing on the current sprint’s results (for example review the Burn-down
Chart or have the team develop an annotated sprint timeline).
• Idea Generation (<30 minutes for a 2 week sprint):
– Encourage the team to dig in and capture the details.
– For retrospectives focused on process or flow, use sticky notes to brainstorm, followed by mute
mapping to group (affinity diagraming).
– For team or personnel issues, use storytelling. For example, have subsets of the team describe
a fictional scenario based on real life problems and how they would solve the problem.
– Consider direct discussion as an alternative.
• Insight Development:
– Once the idea generation step is completed, the team reviews the data and comes to a
consensus about what it means. One method of analysis is to look for patterns and to determine
if there are trends in this stage. The goal is to recognize if there is a problem so you can start to
resolve it.
• Identify An Improvement Objective (<30 minutes for a 2 week sprint):
• Wrap-up: Spend 5 – 10 minutes reviewing the session so that the next retrospective will
be even more effective.
7

Typical Process
Identifying an Improvement Objective
• A team may have identified a number of ideas for improving its productivity.
• Focus on the top 1-2 actionable “big wins.”
• The rationale for not fixing everything:
– The time needed to fix a problem will come from the team’s capacity to
deliver business value (there is only so much capacity that the team has at
its disposal).
– If the remaining issues are really problems, the team can decide to
address them during the next iteration.
– Too many changes at once makes it hard to track cause and effect.
• This continuous incremental process improvement is one reason team
productivity, aka velocity, typically increases from iteration to iteration. After the
team selects the issue (or issues) to be tackled, have them add it to the next
sprint backlog so that it gets addressed.
8

Obstacles
Ritualization
• Ritualization can dramatically affect the value of retrospectives.
• Downward spiral of disillusionment that will inevitably end with the
abandonment of the technique.
• Two typical reasons that cause ritualization:
– The process becomes more important than (or at least as important as)
the results.
– Overcommitted teams who don’t have time to reflect.
– Boredom (wake me up when it's over). The “Works Well” and “Needs
Improvement” format gets really old quickly. The retrospective will usually
be fulfilled so that they team can start planning the next sprint or iteration.
• The Scrum Master or coach needs to help the team address the root
cause of the problem.
• All Scrum Masters should know at least nine techniques for
retrospectives.
9

Obstacles
Culture
• Retrospectives are a tool that the team uses to identify what they can
do better BUT the basic process can all go wrong:
– Making people feel safe
– Generating ideas and solutions so the team can decide on what
they think will make the most significant improvement
– Puts the team in charge of how they work
• If the retrospective process is focused on increasing the team’s
capacity rather than trying to generate lessons learned for the next
project, then non-obvious impediments can easily be missed.
• There are many different techniques for executing retrospectives;
many teams find 1-2 techniques they like, and then they ride that horse
until it collapses.
• Lean thinking removes processes that don’t add value!
10

List Generation Techniques
Affinity Diagraming
11

Sailboat (1)
• This method uses a nautical metaphor.
• The boat moves through the water toward
a goal (the team delivering functionality),
the wind pushes the boat forward.
• As the boat moves through the water, it
encounters resistance, which slows its
progress. Examples of resistance might
include conflicts for needed resources or
conflicting organization goals.
12

Sailboat (2)
• Set-Up: Start by drawing a picture of a
sailboat in the water on your white board
or flip chart. Explain to the team that some
things push you forward, like the wind,
and some things slow your progress
down, like an anchor.
• Idea Generation: Ask the team to identify
what those items were. List 1 item per
sticky note; place them on the boat. As a
facilitator, continue to tweak the seed
questions you are using to keep the team
thinking about the sprint from different
angles. You are done when the team is
done.
13

Sailboat (3)
• Insight Development:
– Have the team review the data and
group ideas based on how they see
the relationships between individual
ideas. Techniques like Mute Mapping
(grouping without talking) help to
maximize team participation while
minimizing the chance of a single
person dominating.
– Once the grouping is done, ask the
team to name each group. This helps
to cement the group’s understanding
of the groupings of ideas that they
have generated.
14
+
Different
Metaphors

Sailboat (4)
• Identify An Improvement Objective: Select
a group or specific idea to fix. There are a
number of techniques to select the
improvement objective:
– Discussion followed by group
consensus (use this when it is
apparent that the group is close to
consensus).
– Vote using dots or post-it flags. Give
each member a fixed number of flags,
and then ask them to vote (they can
use all votes on one item or spread
them). The item or group with highest
number of votes gets fixed first.
15
+
Different
Metaphors

The Four Ls
• Four categories to generate ideas:
– Liked
– Learned
– Lacked
– Longed For
• Write these titles on four flip charts and place around the room.
• Have each person silently generate ideas based on those
categories.
• When the team is done (i.e. everyone stops writing), have the
team place their ideas (written on sticky notes) on the appropriate
flip chart.
• Once the team has come up with its lists, identify the improvement
objective, usually from the lacked or longed for category.
16

What …?
• Use four flip charts, put one of the following titles on each flip
chart:
– What went well?
– What did not go well?
– What should we do more of?
– What should we do less of?
• Brainstorm ideas to put on each flip chart. Put one idea or
statement on each sticky.
• Depending on the group, this method can be done non-verbally
(everyone puts their ideas on a set of “stickies” like the Four Ls or
have the team write ideas down and then shout them out, more
akin to classic brainstorming).
• Insight development and identifying the improvement objective
would follow a similar path to what was described above.
17
+
Different
Seed
Questions

Thorns and Roses
• Go around the team asking for one
thorn (something that could be
improved) and one rose (something
that went well and should be
reinforced) from each team member.
On the first round, each team
member must provide one of each.
• Repeat until there are no more
thorns or roses.
• Insight development and identifying
the improvement objective would
follow a similar path to what was
described above.
18

Other Techniques
• These techniques deal with more complex issues. They can also be
used to “spice up” a more basic fare of listing techniques to keep
teams involved and interested in the retrospective process.
• These techniques are more difficult to execute:
– Timeline Retrospective
– 6 Thinking Hats Retrospective (based on De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats).
– Emotional Trend Line – Often combined with the Timeline technique. It
provides an estimate of the team’s emotional state since the last
retrospective.
– Complexity Retrospective – Draw a complexity radar plot with at least
five axes. Engage the team to determine what each axis should be labeled
(e.g. data, workflow, code, business problem) and then engage the team
to rate each axis. If an axis is rated as complex, ask the team to identify
actions to reduce complexity.
19

Timeline Retrospective
• Goal: The Timeline Retrospective technique develops a visual overview of the
events that occurred during the period under investigation.
• This technique identifies and isolates the events that impacted the team’s
capacity to deliver over a set period of time. It uses distinct colors to identify
events (avoid typical red – green colors as colorblind participants may have
difficulty).
• When To Use:
– The Timeline Retrospective is useful for refreshing and re-grounding the
memories of team.
– If there have not been any intermediate retrospectives.
– To provide context to program-level (i.e. multiple projects) retrospectives.
– If the team has not been working on the project over the whole lifecycle.
– An end of project retrospective.
20

Timeline Retrospective in Action
• Set Up: Draw a timeline that represents the period since the last
retrospective on a white board (or several pieces of flipchart paper).
Make sure there is room above and below the line. Secure dry erase
markers in a few colors and sticky notes in three colors.
– Blue = good events
– Yellow = significant events (neither good nor bad)
– Red = problem events
21

Timeline Retrospective in Action
• The process:
– Have each team member silently write down on sticky notes the major
events, from their perspective, using the color code from above.
– Have each team member put their events on the timeline
chronologically, placing positive events above the timeline, neutral on
or near the timeline, and negative events below the timeline.
– Throw out duplicates.
– Have the team select someone to walk through the final timeline.
– Using the dot voting technique (provide each team member with three
dots), rank the event that slowed the project down the most to-date.
– Identify tasks and actions that could be taken to solve the problems.
Pick the top two or three.
– Have the team tell the story of the project for the next sprint or
release, if they took the identified actions. This will help validate the
choices.
22

6 Thinking Hats Retrospective
• Use this type of approach when:
– The team has experienced significant challenges.
– The team has not established norms on how to interact.
– The team tends to be dominated by 1-2 personalities.
• The team uses a structured approach to discuss the period since the last
retrospective.
• The team “wears” one of De Bono’s “hats” at a time, which means all participants
talk about a specific topic area at a time.
• Each hat represents a particular way of thinking.
• Using the hats forces the team to have a focused discussion (collective thinking).
• Until you are comfortable with this type of technique, use a facilitator. The
facilitator should ensure that the comments are appropriate to the “hat” that is
currently being worn.
23

6 Thinking Hats Retrospective in Action
• Order of the “hats”:
– Blue Hat (5 minutes) – focus on discussing session objectives.
– White Hat (10 minutes) – discuss or identify FACTS or information since the
last sprint (e.g. we had a hurricane during this sprint).
– Yellow Hat (10 minutes) – talk only about the good things that happened
since the last retrospective.
– Black Hat (10 minutes) – talk only about the bad things that happened since
the last retrospective.
– Green Hat (10 minutes) – talk only about ideas to solve the identified
problems or ideas that would add more significant value in the Product
Owner’s perception.
– Red Hat (5 minutes) – have each team member come to the white board or
flip chart and write two emotive statements about the project during this
period. Do this fast and with very little preparation. You want gut reactions.
• Finally, have the team review the emotive statements to identify clusters of
comments or trends that can be combined with the issues in green group.
• From the identified issues, pick 1-2 actions that will improve the ability of the team
to deliver and add them to the backlog for the next sprint.
24

Strategic Retrospectives
DCG AgilityHealth Radar Team Assessments
• Three-hour facilitated workshop that focuses on the top areas that
affect team performance and health:
– Step One: Facilitator works with team to complete the 360 TeamHealth
Radar, covering the 5 key dimensions of a healthy Agile team: Clarity,
Performance, Leadership, Culture, Foundation.
– Step Two: The instructor will engage the team in a healthy and open discussion
around analyzing its radar results and reviewing its Strengths, Improvements and
Top Impediments to growth. The final output is a team Growth Plan with key
outcomes the team wants to achieve within the next few months.
• The real value from this workshop is the open and honest
conversations to help the team get past any current roadblocks and
develop a clear plan of action for getting their performance and health
to the next level.
• Repeat this strategic retrospective each quarter as a refresh on the
“per sprint/iteration” retrospectives
25

26

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• Report Contents:
– AHR Charts
– Top 5 and Lowest 5 Competencies
– Top 5 and Lowest 5 Consensus Competencies
– Notes by 5 key dimensions and for last 3 questions:
• Strengths
• Improvements
• Impediments
– Growth Plan
28

To Summarize:
• The Scrum Master or coach needs to help the team address the root
cause of the problem.
• All Scrum Masters should know at least nine techniques for
retrospectives.
1. Affinity Diagramming
2. Sailboat
3. The 4 Ls
4. What …?
5. Timeline Retrospective
6. 6 Thinking Hats Retrospective
7. Emotional Trend Line
8. Complexity Retrospective
9. DCG’s AgilityHealth Rader TeamHealth Assessment
29

Contact Us
Email: m.harris@softwarevalue.com
Phone: 1-610-644-2856
http://www.softwarevalue.com
30
@DCGSWValue
/DCGSWValue
/company/DCG-Software-Value
Measure. Optimize. Deliver.
softwarevalue.com

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