A Sprint Retrospective is a collaborative team meeting held upon the successful completion of a sprint, after the sprint review, and before the next sprint planning. The Sprint Retrospective aims to reflect on achievements, identify improvement opportunities, assess risks and concerns, and formulate enhancement tactics to make the next sprint even better.
The entire team—the developers, Scrum master, and the product owner—come together to look back on and analyze the sprint they just completed. This is a great time for the team to reflect on their practices, exchanging what they thought worked and what needs improvement about each others' work.
Many teams are an amalgamation of different personalities—yours may have a combination of introverts, extroverts, an overenthusiastic worker who takes on too much and even someone who's super talented but difficult to deal with. Retrospectives are a great opportunity to get everyone all on one platform, connecting as a team. Retrospectives help people overcome their fear of communication and learn the nuances of offering constructive criticism in a way that doesn't hurt anybody. Admitting mistakes and growing together helps a team bond like nothing else.
In some teams, product owners and Scrum masters often bow out of retrospectives because they think its an exercise for the development team, or because they think the team might have trouble being candid in their presence. Some teams don't treat retrospectives as a mandatory exercise and hold one after every few sprints. Both of these practices can be unhealthy. The Scrum team includes both the Scrum master and the Product Owner, so it's crucial that they understand the exchanges within a development team and the technical aspects of their work. It also helps the team to learn about the work of a PO and a Scrum master.
In a retrospective, it's important to remember everyone's work is on the table and all feedback should be welcome.
Sprint retrospectives in the scrum framework are often the first thing a team cancels when they're short on time. If nobody takes the floor during retrospective meetings, the scrum master may try to salvage the situation by keeping the conversation going until everyone decides the meeting is over. Without a constructive environment, some team members may start using the sessions to have unproductive conversations, so the team as a whole may decide these meetings are a waste of time.
Drawing from the famous children's story, the Three Little Pigs activity has the team divide a board into three columns and name them as:
Give your team a bunch of sticky notes. They can jot down their thoughts and put them in any column they see fit. Once they're done, discuss each sticky note as a team.
Source: www.funretrospectives.com
In this activity, the three sprint retrospective questions we aim to answer are:
Hand out color-coded sticky notes to your teammates and ask them to stick their answers on the board under the respective columns. The team groups similar answers and discusses them. There are subtle variations in this method. You could mix it up with
Source: www.funretrospectives.com
This involves putting up three posters labeled "mad," "sad," and "glad." Team members write down one event or practice on each color-coded card and add them to the board that matches their feelings about it. You can then discuss by asking:
These activities are used to gather structured feedback and discuss areas of improvement.
In addition to these, some teams also use fun, energizing games to loosen people up and segue into the actual retrospective. Here are a couple of them you can try out:
Source: www.retromat.org
Form a large circle with your teammates. Each person looks at the neighbor on their right and says something appreciative about that person. A random person starts and the train of compliments ensues. You could also take turns sitting in the middle of the circle and have everyone on the team compliment you on something you did in the last sprint. Good vibes guaranteed!
Source: www.retromat.org
Before the meeting, spend some time to look through the channels of communication that your team uses: email threads, chat logs or ticket discussions. Pull quotes from the last iteration that sound funny or ambiguous without the right context and jot down the name of the author. During the retrospective, ask the team to guess who said it—the source may not self-identify!
There are more activities like these with varying degrees of complexity and time investment. Such games and activities are a great way to blow off some steam or break the ice within your team, but the effectiveness of your retrospectives should not depend entirely on how fun your meetings are. These meetings should be a safe space in your team culture to give feedback without any repercussions.
Source: www.retromat.org
A Sprint Retrospective meeting is a post-sprint gathering where teams come together to review achievements, identify areas for improvement, and plan and set goals for an improved sprint ahead.
You can only improve so much in a sprint. Constant change can be exhausting and mentally challenging for a lot of people, so we recommend picking two or three things (number can differ based on the nature of improvements and your team) that you want to improve in that sprint. You're setting up yourself up for failure if you think you can improve ten or more things in your next sprint. It's important to spread your motivation evenly across the duration of your project, and one of the biggest impediments to sustainable productivity can be extremely high doses of motivation or a Scrum master's "tough love."
A feedback session does not give you a free pass to roast your colleagues. Overly critical feedback can often be shrouded under "good intentions," but people can't hear intentions, only words. Disagreements between teammates can often turn ugly, but conflict-avoidance means the team ends up settling for a less-than-good solution rather than confronting the issue. Respect and trust for your teammates are must-haves in a Scrum team, and conflict resolution is one of the best techniques a team can learn in order to grow into the best version of themselves.
"Fail fast" is a common phrase in the agile world, but its meaning is at odds with the culture prevalent in a corporate environment. People subconsciously pit themselves against others and when you're always competing, you're less likely to try things you might fail at. Create a culture which rewards trying, not just succeeding. Failures can be great teachers and sharing them with your team makes everyone wiser. Healthy discussion is a great way to break the stigma of failure.
Not everyone welcomes feedback with open arms. It can be a touchy subject for a lot of people. However, when people learn to separate themselves from their work, they accept criticism more readily and become more objective about their work. This is obviously easier said than done, but every team has to keep at it. Accepting criticism and using it to improve is an indispensable quality of successful teams.
The Sprint Retrospective is attended by individuals who actively contributed to the recently completed sprint. This includes both team members who worked on the sprint's tasks and activities, as well as the scrum team. The Sprint Retrospective encourages participants who were directly involved with the sprint to contribute their insights, perspectives, and feedback to plan things better for an improved sprint ahead.
After each sprint, there are two important meetings: Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective. During the Sprint Review, the Scrum Team shows their completed work to stakeholders, getting their thoughts and feedback. It's a chance to make sure everyone is on the same page and to get external opinions. Sprint review takes place after the sprint is completed and before the Sprint Retrospective.
Conversely, the Sprint Retrospective is an exclusive meeting between the scrum team and the members who worked on the sprint's tasks. During this session, the team evaluates their teamwork and identifies areas for future improvement. The sprint retrospective meeting happens after the Sprint Review and before planning the next sprint. This process helps the team learn and become better over time. Both meetings play distinct but crucial roles in successful agile teamwork.
Scrum follows an inspect-and-adapt approach, so retrospectives are a critical tool in your process. They give your team an opportunity to routinely critique and improve your processes. Retrsopectives are all about growing with the people on your team: you learn to iron out disagreements, resolve conflicts, and work with people you don't agree with. This helps individuals become better team players, and great teams do extraordinary things.