A Simple Approach To Sprint Retrospectives

I find the word retrospect very interesting as it basically means to review the past. I have always proclaimed that I am a “We Move” kinda guy which is simply my way of saying that I don't look back, I only look forward to what comes next. I could feed you “bs” and say that product management changed all that for me but the truth is that failing a course I prepared for in my first year in college made me retrospective. I basically tried to understand why I failed despite being prepared for a “B”.

Well, Sprint retrospective is all about humans in the product team coming together to understand 4things in my perspective:

1. What did we do well?
2. What should we improve?
3. What should we stop doing?
4. What should we start doing?

Before going further on the 4 items, it is important to understand the origin of the sprint retrospective, it is part of the 4 events in the scrum framework in Agile project management. Every development cycle or period is known as a sprint and the retrospective helps gain insights into what things made us perform badly or efficiently. The most important part of the retrospective is that it is a team effort and it’s one of those rare moments when team members should be able to speak their mind, so you don’t want stakeholders or top management folks at this meeting, you can communicate the outcome of the meeting to them but they do not need to know the details.

The purpose of this article is to share my opinion based on my work experience, I want to simply share how best I think sprint retrospective should be run to achieve the ultimate goal; attain a more efficient team and ship products more efficiently.

So below you will find very helpful tips:

1. Meeting should have a happy mood:

You won’t find this in the scrum guide but take this very seriously and please try not to be too “serious” during a sprint retrospective. Before you get into the business of the day, try to create a happy atmosphere, you can do the following:

1. Tell jokes about your day, cats, or talk about a funny meme.
2. Discuss another issue entirely that is not related to the retrospective.
3. Delegate the task of getting everyone to smile to the funniest person in the team.

These steps aren’t set in stone, do whatever works for you but do not forget why you put together this meeting and make sure this does not take too long. You do not want the retrospective turning into a laugh session.

The reason why this step is important is that the retrospective is all about getting the team to be honest about the just-concluded sprint. It is in your best interest as a scrum master or product manager to make them feel comfortable about saying their thoughts. It’s crucial that they do.

Don’t forget that no stakeholder management executive is invited to the meeting.

2. Tell them about the retrospective:

Explain loudly and briefly

The next step is for you to explain the essence of the sprint retrospective, in this case, you want to give the team some context as to why you are having the meeting, let them know if past retrospectives had any impact on the just ended sprint, and let them know it was all because of their contribution as skilled workers and as teammates who contributed to the team during meetings like the one you are having.

Even if your team is familiar with sprint retrospectives, this part provides an opportunity for team bonding and encouragement so it’s alright to repeat.

This part is very essential to ensure that your team members understand how crucial the meeting is and makes them understand why you want them to be more efficient.

3. Document It:

No Boring Files

This is where you need to gather team members’ thoughts and place them in a document that is readable, understandable, and specific.

I have prepared a process that I find might helpful for anyone looking for a way to document thoughts during the meeting, it’s simple and should give you action points to implement. It starts with gathering the feedback on a board with sticky notes, you could use a physical board if you are working from the office or you could use a Miro board.

Miro Board for Retrospective

The image above is a personal template I intend to use, your team might be larger or smaller, all you have to do is add more sticky notes or reduce the number of sticky notes.

It is important to note that different companies have their own approach, some look for more quantitative feedback and record the feedback in spreadsheets, others can use a simple doc file.

The reason why I prefer the sticky note approach is that it provides some visual aid and then the sticky notes being small make it clear to the team that their feedback should be clear and short.

Conclusion:

As you have gathered all that has been said, it is left for you to report crucial matters to stakeholders especially in the case of resources or matters relating to conduct. It is helpful to compare the retrospective with past ones and see if there are any common issues and test to see if what you have done well has consistently improved productivity.

The whole point of the sprint retrospective is to make the team a lot more agile, you should always approach it with empathy above everything else.