Archive for the ‘Retrospective’ Category
An Effective Format for Retrospectives
Change is good. That’s what we always say right? On this occasion it really was. Recently a new member of an engineering team brought with them from their previous organisation some great alternative ideas for agile approaches. One in particular was the format of their retrospective.
It goes like this:
The scrum team are all present.
There are two sets of post-it notes, each of a different colour, it’s agreed what colour is for good and what colour is for bad.
The team collectively set about writing one point per post-it what they feel was good and/or bad about the iteration they’ve just completed.
Each team member then gets a chance to stand up in front of the team and read out their notes, elaborating when either prompted or just when they feel like it, and stick them on a board.
When everyone has had their turn, the post-its are categorised into topics and grouped together.
It’s very easy to see what was good about the iteration, but also what was bad.
Then team members each have three votes for improvement which they can add to whatever post-it, or its, they choose.
The votes are tallied and the two topics (either grouped or individual) with the highest amount of votes are turned into backlog items for the next iteration. Of course if there are other negatives that can be easily addressed they are not excluded.
We’ve found this format to be very successful. The structured approach means we easily fit into the time box for the meeting. Every team member gets their chance to praise what they liked, or vent their frustration over what they didn’t; it’s actually quite a good bonding session. The focus on the big negatives means they never fester and are addressed promptly, so the team is continually improving.
