Scrum Sprint Retrospectives : Making change count
Scrum Sprint Retrospectives are the most important meetings in the Scrum process. In these meetings the process gets improved and optimised. If there was ever a doubt regarding the empirical nature of Scrum this meeting should clear that up. Although the meeting is typically a very frank one, the outcome is always the next ‘One Big Thing’. In short, what can we do to optimise this process. How do we become the best at what we do.
The Scrum guide defines the Retrospective as follows:
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.
Retrospectives certainly evolve over time. The more mature the team becomes, the deeper the Retrospectives go. When starting out with a team, most impediments are quickly forthcoming. They are dropped into the backlog and become a improvement to be focussed on in the next sprint. A nice clean empirical outcome. Every time!
My Retrospectives typically run as follows. I start by focusing on a few concepts as mentioned in the Scrum guide.
Inspect how the last Sprint went with regards to people, relationships, process, and tools.
The retrospective magic starts happening when people start talking. As Scrum masters we need to facilitate this process.
In my experience it is a good idea to approach the meeting by first focussing on the process and the tools.
Practically I would ask the following questions.
- Are you experiencing any challenges regarding your tools when considering the following:
- Your environment
- Your software development tools
- The technical infrastructure
- Anything else
- Looking back at the Scrum process, is there anything that we can improve on:
- How did the Kickoff go. Is there anything that we can change / improve?
- Are the stories presented properly and with clarity?
- Do you feel that the stories was ‘Definition of Ready’ or would you like the product owner to communicate more clearly?
- Was the product owner available during the ‘How’ part of the kickoff to answer questions and help the team get clarity on the stories?
- Are the right people on-board in order to accurately determine how each story should be completed? Do we have the right people on the bus?
- Do you have the right people on the team? Are there any skills missing?
- Are you comfortable with the way that weighting is being done? Can we improve in any way?
- Do you find the Stand-ups useful? How can we improve?
I think the point is made. The list is endless. The focus, in my mind, is on getting a conversation going. A positive conversation! The moment the conversation veers off course and starts heading South the Scrum master should guide the ship back.
The people and relationship discussions can be a bit more tricky. When stepping into a retrospective, everyone should have their ‘big boy’ pants on. With that I mean that maturity is key. The growth towards a self-organising team can be slow and sometimes challenging. People need to find each other. Once they do we get a wonderful, empowered, autonomous, self-organising team going which cannot be stopped.
I find a few guidelines helpful:
- Be frank but not hurtful.
- Engage in the conversation.
- Don’t be afraid to be ‘human’.
The retrospective should be a safe space where only the relevant team members are involved. This is where the team processes evolve to fully leverage the power of Scrum.
After all the subjects have been discussed to the satisfaction of the team, I usually move forward by asking a few questions:
- What should we stop doing?
- What should we continue doing?
- What should we start doing?
By this stage a clear ‘Next Big Thing’ should have been identified. As a final step the definition of done should be reviewed if needed.
Retrospectives evolve over time. As the team matures the Scrum master can guide them towards finer grained improvements by using techniques like the happiness matrix, happiness seismograph, in depth metric evaluation as well as activities like defining a ‘Definition of fun’.
Happy Retrospecting!
