Retrospective
Short Tip: The Cycle’s final step to identify points for improvement.
What is it?
It’s the Cycle’s last step and it aims to foster reflection by the team and to encourage the adoption of improvements, whether in terms of processes, behaviors, relationships, etc.
By the end of this step, the team is expected to have found actions that should be continued or expanded, as well as others to be rejected or modified.
Why use it?
The retrospective is the team’s opportunity to evaluate its trajectory through the Cycle. This reflection is also essential to allow the team to grow and improve its performance. It is also an opportunity to constructively express problems and discontents.
How to use it?
The meeting is conducted by the team itself, without hierarchies. Facilitation by an experienced team member is a recommended technique.
The book Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great, by Diana Larsen and Esther Derby, suggests adopting the following 5 steps:
- Set the Stage: the facilitator should initially tell the teams about the goal of the meeting and “break the ice”. The book suggests several techniques to that end;
- It may be useful to review the content of the previous retrospective in order to create a sense of continuity;
- Gather Data: the facilitator should encourage the team to look into the cycle events and collect data, be they objective (e.g., the team’s speed and the number of unfinished items) or subjective (e.g., how committed the team felt during the Cycle);
- Generate Insights: based on data, the team should try to find out why those events took place, and their less obvious root causes;
- Decide What to Do: define together the actions to be taken in order to address the root causes pointed out in the previous phase. At least one action should be included in the next Planning Meeting in order to ensure the team’s constant improvement;
- Close the Retrospective: evaluate together the retrospective’s effectiveness and celebrate the results.