Conducting Agile Retrospectives

© 2015 Intelliware Development Inc.
Agile
Retrospectives

Agile Retrospectives
What you’ll learn in this presentation:
•  The value of retrospectives
•  How to conduct retrospectives effectively

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Why Retrospectives?
Retrospectives directly address one of
the twelve principles of Agile:
At regular intervals, the team reflects on
how to become more effective, then
tunes and adjusts its behavior
accordingly.1
1 http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

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What is a Retrospective?
A retrospective is a meeting to look back
over an iteration, release, or project,
specifically to discuss what worked well,
what could be improved, and most
importantly, how to translate the lessons
learned into actionable change.
Retrospectives are a forum for the team to
improve upon their process. They're an
integral part of Scrum and Extreme
Programming (XP).2
2 http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules/fixit.html

The purpose of a retrospective is to inspect and adapt.
This can result in:
•  Improved productivity
•  Better capability
•  Higher product quality
•  Happier team members
There are always opportunities for continuous improvement, no matter how
good you already are.
Retrospective Benefits

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Retrospectives are the basis for an overall
continuous improvement process:
•  The process is primarily applicable to
short format retrospectives (more on
retrospective forms on slide 9)
•  At the retrospective, the team identifies
and plans for improvement activities. The
team then makes some change. At the
following retrospective, the team checks
on the implemented changes and
decides what further actions to take
Continuous Improvement Process

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The scope for a retrospective can include anything to do with the team or the
project outside of direct story work. Matters can be categorized as follows:
•  Technical matters
o  e.g. Lack of skills with technologies used on the project
•  Development process matters
o  e.g. Automated build process keeps breaking down and is not getting fixed
•  People and team matters
o  e.g. Some team members are not fully engaged or are not in the room enough
Scope for Retrospectives

A team will be motivated to implement improvements because of the
following reasons:
•  They deal with real problems that affect the team
o  Team members should see value in the planned improvements and will
be excited to see them implemented
•  They do not need management permission
o  Improvements happen within the team
•  They are chosen, not imposed
o  Improvements are chosen by the team, providing feelings of self
empowerment and responsibility
Improvement Motivations

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Retrospective Forms

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The retrospective should involve:
•  The team – anyone directly involved in
the iteration, release or project:
o  Developers
o  QAs
o  BAs
o  Project manager(s)
o  Customer and client
o  Et al.
•  A facilitator – somebody familiar with the
team, project and process, but not
directly involved with the project
Retrospective Participants

Set The Stage - Prepare the team
Gather Data - Create a shared picture of what happened
Generate Insights – Gather data, interpret and analyze it
Decide What To Do - Think ahead to action items for the next iteration
Close the Retrospective - Reflect on what happened, wrap up
5 Stages of a Retrospective
Derby, Esther and Larsen, Diana, 2006. Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great
The Pragmatic Bookshelf, Raleigh, North Carolina.

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•  Prepare the team for the work they’ll be doing
in the retrospective
•  Usually only takes 5 minutes or less.
•  Can be as simple as:
o  Making introductions
o  Reviewing the goal(s) for the retrospective
o  Checking on the status of activities defined in the
previous retrospective
o  Reviewing the agenda
o  Checking in3
Set The Stage
3 http://www.mccarthyshow.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/The+Core+Protocols+3.03.pdf

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•  Should take about 15 minutes
•  A typical activity is creating a timeline
o  Determine start and end dates
o  Have the team write Post-it notes and
place them on the timeline, or have the
facilitator add them
o  Post-it notes can be colour coded or dots
added to indicate feelings about the
events, e.g. glad, sad, mad
Gather Data

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•  Allow the team to dig deeper into what
happened on the iteration, release or project
•  Length of time will vary:
o  Short format retrospective - about 30 minutes
o  Long format retrospective - 1 or more hours may be
required
•  Similar to a timeline, observations can be
recorded on cards and placed on whiteboards,
or they can be recorded by the facilitator
•  Two example activities:
o  What went well, what didn’t go so well, …
o  More, less, keep, start, stop
Generate Insights

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•  Ask the team these questions:
o  What went well?
o  What didn’t go so well?
o  What could we have done better?
•  The questions do not need to be
followed sequentially
•  The team can write their insights
on Post-it notes and place them
on the board, or the facilitator can
record them
•  This is the preferred activity for a
long-format retrospective
Generate Insights – Example Activity #1

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•  Ask the team these questions: What could we…
o  Do more of?
o  Do less of?
o  Keep doing?
o  Start doing?
o  Stop doing?
•  Actions can be written on Post-it notes and
placed on the board by the team, or recorded by
the facilitator
•  Preferred activity for a short-format retrospective
as it leads to specific actions
Generate Insights – Example Activity #2

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•  Identify key issues and priority actions:
1.  Prioritize key issues
•  Dot voting and/or affinity analysis
2.  Brainstorm actions
3.  Prioritize actions
4.  Assign actions
•  Be realistic about how much time you’ll
spend on continuous improvement.
•  Choosing one or two high priority actions
is more likely to result in success rather
than a long bucket list
Decide What To Do

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•  Important to allow the team to reflect on
what happened during the retrospective,
and to provide closure
•  Should take no more than 5 to 10 minutes
•  Some sample activities:
o  Recap – the facilitator reviews key insights and
actions, the team confirms next steps.
o  Appreciations – team members share
appreciations with others using the following
format: “I appreciate person X for something Y.”
Close the Retrospective

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•  Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby and Diana
Larsen. The definitive guide to Agile retrospectives.
•  Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Reviews by Norm Kerth. A good
complement to Agile Retrospectives.
•  Agile Retrospective Resource Wiki : shared retrospective plans, tips & tricks, etc.
•  Retrospective Plan: a collection of detailed retrospective plans you can run or take
inspiration from.
Derby, Esther and Larsen, Diana, 2006. Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great. The Pragmatic Bookshelf, Raleigh, North Carolina.
Kerth, Norman L., 2001. Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Reviews. Dorset House, New York, New York.
Further Reading

About Intelliware Development Inc.
Intelliware is a custom software, mobile solutions and product development
company headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Intelliware is a leader in Agile
software development practices which ensure the delivery of timely high quality
solutions for clients. Intelliware is engaged as a technical partner by a wide
range of organizations in sectors that span Financial Services, Healthcare, ICT,
Retail, Manufacturing and Government.
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