What do you think was strange? Is anyone trying to monopolize the conversation? Which skill or competence do you bring with you to the team? Thank you, most kind sir. If you’re worried about votes becoming too personal, keep entries anonymous. An activity like Liked, Learned, Lacked and Longer For of Superhero. A. What is your superpower for the team? Retrospective Identify how to improve teamwork by reflecting on what worked, what didn’t, and why. It’s important to think critically together about what viable incremental change looks like. One technique often used in agile retrospectives is to ask questions to the Scrum team, and collect and cluster the answers. Almost the same as the previous activity. Before everyone leaves, you want to make the knowledge built during the retrospective available for later use. Are there items that we can skip, or items that we value but don’t give enough focus? You will probably want to customize different components of your retrospective agenda and scale it to size. Trust me—leaving your team with a few stars to follow rather than a bottomless wishlist of actions will make solutions a whole lot easier to follow through. Whether you’re new to the software development game or been a player for years, chances are you’ve participated in a sprint retrospective.If done well, these agile meetings can highlight opportunities for change, generate meaningful process improvements, and ultimately move the team in the right direction.If done poorly, a sprint retrospective can turn into a blame … I am really glad you put pictures with each suggestion. The title of the flip chart is “Draw The Sprint”, hard to read. Brainstorm ideas (5 minutes) This stage puts data into context, focusing specifically on what … It is what you celebrate, do you celebrate failure or success? I do this activity every three/four months. Organize a lean coffee to collect data during the retrospective. It’ll be difficult to track and analyze results over the long term without some form of written evidence. Could you please suggest some ideas for remote team. I would advise you to read the book first before playing this activity. The trick is to change up the format every once in a while – retros quickly become stale if you sleepwalk your way through the same agenda every time. A quick way of getting feedback. This will make people think about issues and possible solutions. A retrospective is a meeting that happens at the end of the project or at the end of each scrum sprint. In this case, you can use the template at the bottom of the flip chart to help the team define SMART actions. A tool to get insights on several areas at once. Use this step to set a tone that makes attendees feel like their presence is important. Also don’t be afraid to stretch the five minutes allocated to this stage if you’re dealing with a particularly thorny issue. Still unsure which prompts will generate the info you need? We can have a lot of discussion about Agile and what it stands for, but for me, when you have no regular retrospectives, things are definitely not Agile. Retrospection is one the the most vital inspect and adapt ceremony in Scrum, yet it is the most underutilized ceremony for various reasons despite the fact that it is one of those ceremonies which can be done in many different ways. Here’s where those exercises I mentioned above can work some real magic—as frameworks for discussion that offer different ways to gather critical information about how the team is doing or where they see problems. But shortcuts are more likely when folks expect the same prompts every time. Rotate the Scrum Retrospective facilitator. A retro isn’t a finger pointing exercise, or an audience held captive by only the most vocal team members. What are your goals? Below are some sample contexts: 1. I like to conduct a sprint retrospective by asking team members what they would start, stop and continue doing. An issue I need to discuss with the manager or with the team, depending on the maturity level of the team. You can’t implement them all. The agile principle of “learn and adapt” can be implemented. I often combine Gather The Data with the next step Generate Insights. 🙂 Maybe it was a small glitch somewhere along the line. I would say, propose it to Scrum.org 😉. These are hard questions. Ask the team to write down what they think is the superpower of the team. Ask people to write down their feeling on a sticky note. Good point! Specifying acceptance tests early and with customers 3. I often combine Gather the Data with Generate Insights. Preparation. This way, a retrospective meeting (also known as a sprint retrospective, sprint retro, or Scrum retrospective) aids the continuous improvement of work processes and products. In this stage, you try to discover root causes, patterns, create shared awareness. For example, for the Gather-The-Data step, you could use “What Went Well and What Went Wrong.”. The activity is described here, it is inspired by Spotify. An example of how you can discuss and make visual how the team thinks about the five dysfunctions of a team. You’ve identified their root cause. A well done agile retrospective boils down to great benefits, including a more self-organized team, better collaboration, faster velocity, and happier end-users. Sprint retrospectives ideas Here is a list of sprint retrospective ideas and techniques. Worst case, people already come in with their findings written on a sticky note to put it on the board as soon as they enter the room. September 25, 2017 — The actions are not executed, but how do they feel at this moment about the time invested? Agile Strides promises they will only use this data for their newsletter. One of the most straightforward ways to run a Retrospective is the “Start, Stop, Continue” exercise. Car Brand or Two Truths and a Lie are fun ways to reframe how the team visualizes the problem. Ask the team to be creative with Lego bricks and build something that provides feedback to you. This will make it very easy to reuse the flipcharts. This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Love these, I have used some of these but great to see them all in one place. These are really awesome ideas! Good things to discuss in a sprint retrospective meeting are what were the positive aspects of the sprint, what were the roadblocks faced and what learning this sprint has provided. (Scrum masters can make comments anonymous if they think it will promote an open and safe discussion.). Remember that everyone is coming in the door from different places, mentally and physically. Also check out the site of Lisette Sutherlands, http://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com. agile, blog. Next step was splitting the team, every team again creating both rankings. Be aware, it are a lot of pictures so it could take a while. Try to get facts on the table, not opinions. Make sure you got stickies. Co… Click here for downloading the free booklet! As this blog post is very popular, I decided to create a booklet for free! Consider segmenting action points as well. My team surely love the ideas. The pair who was closest by the final ranking won a small price.I used this form to collect the data: We Do – We Value form. Consider occasionally running a brief team building exercise as part of emphasizing the importance of team cohesiveness. Ask people to write a Kudo card. As described in the Scrum Guide, 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. But do you listen for key clues in folks’ responses? Ask them to fold the papers. Please enter your data below. Teams also hold retrospectives to discuss outages and incidents. An E, S, V or P will do. Some scrum masters leave this until the end. We’ve tended to forget that no computer will ever ask a new question.”. Prisoner, totally doesn’t like the retro and it is punishment (s)he needs to be here. The proof is in a common theme of exit interviews: When people don’t feel recognized at work, they’re more likely to leave. The Netherlands. Better to do one thing well than spread resources too thin. Note there’s no one-size-fits-all template that works for all teams in all situations. Many Scrum Masters, or facilitators, always use the same activities during the retrospective. In constrast, in agile environments, a retrospective is short and done often (e.g. Ask people to give scores on the form. In this blog post, I want to share some ideas for hosting agile retrospectives, including some ideas on how to make a retrospective visual more attractive. After the first step, one person of every group goes to the next group, one team members stays with the form. For shorter Sprints, the event is usually shorter. Be careful, the retro is done but this could start a new discussion. Ask people to write down things that happened and to put them on the flip chart where they think the item should be. These are nice ideas, thank you. Again make sure you do it anonymous. Maybe it was a bit too creative 😉. A bit the same like the previous one. If they stay, they don’t perform as well. First impressions are important. Therefore, it doesn’t matter what they think the emoticon is; they need to explain it anyways. You can use any set of cards, as long as it triggers the ideas of people. Designing the perfect agile retrospective meeting agenda is about providing a balance between structure and freedom. Create your own twitter wall. I understand and agree that my data will be used to send me a newsletter. Their answers will guide the improvisational aspects of your retrospective. Ask people to write down how they feel about team. When asking questions about why things aren’t working, beware of finger-pointing. Ask people to describe the last iteration with just one word. Make sure you put the sticky notes back in your pocket, keep it anonymous and throw them away afterwards. Weird.. works on my internet 😉 Can you please tell which pictures don’t load? In this step, we establish the focus for the retrospective, share the plan for the … A sprint retrospective is a great way for your team to reflect on the previous sprint, the work that was done, the goals achieved, and generate ideas for improvement. Finding root causes is already difficult but defining actionable items is even more difficult for some team members. Click on it to learn more and to create your first board.