An Agile retrospective is a meeting held at the end of an iteration in Agile project management. It’s when the team can assess past work and plan future project goals. During an effective retrospective, the team is engaged and there is a clear follow-up plan.
Full Answer
What is the purpose of an agile retrospective?
- Set the stage - get the team ready to engage in the retrospective, perhaps with a warm-up activity such as Plus, Minus, Interesting (PMI) (5 minutes).
- Gather data - create a shared picture of what happened during the retrospective (10 minutes).
- Generate insights - discuss what was successful and identify any roadblocks to success (10 minutes).
What is the recommended way to run retrospective in agile?
What is the recommended way to run retrospective in agile?
- Set the Stage.
- Gather Data.
- Generate Insights.
- Decide What to Do.
- Close the Retrospective.
Why do we need agile retrospectives?
Why Scaling Retros Is the Next Step in Your Agile Transformation
- Team Retros. Team retros are the execution level of organizational retrospectives. ...
- Portfolio Retros. The second level of organizational retrospectives that you can apply is program and portfolio retros.
- Organizational Level Retros. ...
- Running Scaled Retros. ...
Why would you do agile retrospectives?
Activity: One Word Check In
- In one word, how are you feeling right now?
- If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
- What was the last thing you ate?
- If you could describe the previous iteration in a single word, what would it be?
What are retrospectives in Agile?
A retrospective is anytime your team reflects on the past to improve the future. Between technical and non-technical teams, you can retro on just about anything!
What are the 3 retrospective questions?
Three things you can do todayWhat went well (keep doing these things)What could be improved (went OK, but could be better)What went badly (don't do these things again)Focus for next period/sprint/month/quarter (One or two things to focus on)
Why do we do retrospectives?
A Retrospective is a ceremony held at the end of each iteration in an agile project. The general purpose is to allow the team, as a group, to evaluate its past working cycle. In addition, it's an important moment to gather feedback on what went well and what did not.
What are the 3 stages of Agile planning?
All agile teams aren't created equal. We've defined the three stages of agile teams with practical tips on how you can get your team to the ultimate goal – being cross-functional, self-sufficient, innovative and proactively improving.
What are the 3 pillars of scrum?
The three pillars of empiricism at the base of the Scrum framework are:transparency,inspection,adaptation.
What do you say during retrospective?
Questions to ask when closing a sprint retrospectiveCan you reiterate the most important thing you learned today?How are you feeling about our next sprint now that we've identified these issues?Is anyone confused or unclear on any of the items we discussed today?Do all of our next steps make sense?More items...•
Why retrospectives are important in Agile?
A Critical Component of Agile Success Retrospectives play a critical role as post-sprint milestones for any large-scale project. Knowing how to get the most out of each meeting will help you to identify points for improvement, collect more feedback from your teams, and position your next sprint for success.
How retrospectives could help with agility?
Retrospectives increase agility and efficiency of teams Since the team members feel empowered, there will be little resistance to do the actions that come out of the retrospective. Another benefit is that the actions that are agreed in a retrospective are done by the team members, there is no hand-over!
How do you run a retrospective in Agile?
How to run a remote retrospective with your teamStep 1: Create an environment of psychological safety. ... Step 2: Figure out the agenda and logistics. ... Step 3: Review the recent past. ... Step 4: Discuss candidly, but respectfully. ... Step 4: Decide what you'll take action on before the next retrospective.More items...•
What are the 5 phases of agile?
The five phases of the Agile project management modelEnvision: This is the first phase of the APM Framework and corresponds with the Initiation phase of PMBOK. ... Speculate: This is similar to the planning phase of the PMBOK's version. ... Explore: ... Adapt: ... Close:
What are the 5 levels of agile planning?
The 5 Levels of Agile PlanningVision. Before creating your vision statement, we must focus on the customer by identifying the roles that will be interacting with the product. ... Roadmap. ... Release. ... Iteration. ... Daily Stand Up.
What are the 6 steps in the Agile methodology?
What are the 6 steps in the Agile methodology?Project planning. Like with any project, before beginning your team should understand the end goal, the value to the organization or client, and how it will be achieved. ... Product roadmap creation. ... Release planning. ... Sprint planning. ... Daily stand-ups. ... Sprint review and retrospective.
Why is an agile retrospective important?
The biggest advantage of agile is that you can adapt to changes quickly. An agile retrospective is a vital tool in adapting to change, providing th...
How do you start a retrospective?
David Horowitz, co-founder and CEO of Retrium, a company with a mission to improve agile retrospectives, suggests starting a retrospective by setti...
How do you make a retrospective fun?
To make a retrospective fun, it’s important to make sure everyone is on the same page. Encouraging participation from the whole team is another way...
Who attends an Agile retrospective?
The entire team should attend the Agile retrospective. The retrospectives usually last between 30 minutes to an hour.
What is the purpose of a retrospective?
As stated before, the purpose of a retrospective is to help the team improve very quickly. To do this, the team builds an action plan during the retrospective, consisting of one or more action items. There are endless examples of action elements as there can be so many topics covered in a retrospective.
What is retrospective in a team meeting?
“A retrospective is a chance for a team to reflect and learn from the past within a structured meeting.
What is Agile Coach?
An Agile Coach also has the experience and skills to perform this facilitation work. However, in their goal to become self-organized, many Agile teams operate a continuous rotation when it comes to designate the next retrospective facilitator.
How long is a sprint retrospective?
Here is another valuable clarification from the Scrum Guide : “ The Sprint Retrospective [...] is timeboxed to a maximum of three hours for a one-month Sprint.
When should retrospectives take place in agile?
For agile teams working in the traditional two week sprint, the retrospective should take place at the end of every sprint. For teams running a more Kanban-esque style of work, a monthly or quarterly retrospective may make more sense. It's also healthy to engage members of the broader leadership after major initiatives have been rolled out; be careful to focus not on what was delivered, but rather on how the team worked together produce it.
What is a retrospective in a team?
The retrospective should be a positive, energizing experience for your team.
How to do a retrospective meeting?
The purpose of the retrospective meeting is to: 1 Evaluate how the last sprint, iteration, or work item went, specifically around the team dynamic, processes, and tools. 2 Articulate and stack rank the items that went well, and those items that did not. 3 Create and implement a plan for improving the way the team does work.
Why is it important to standardize retrospectives?
Standardizing your retrospective is a good idea to create consistency and to build trust amongst the team over time. But there are a few "tweaks" facilitators can try that may help uncover additional insights, encourage participation from new team members, or simply keep it interesting.
What Is an Agile Retrospective?
A retrospective is a stage of the overarching Agile project management framework. It’s a chance for a team to get together and ask what’s going well, what’s not going well and what can be improved moving forward.
How To Run an Effective Retrospective Meeting
Horowitz breaks down the process of an effective retrospective into five phases.
Reasons Retrospective Meetings May Be Ineffective
Through interviewing hundreds of companies over the last six years, Horowitz discovered three of the most common reasons retrospective meetings can be ineffective: low participation, lack of psychological safety and lack of follow-through. We outline these reasons below and discuss how to address these challenges in the following section.
Tips To Run a Successful Retrospective
To help fix a lack of follow-through, Horowitz encourages team leaders to pay attention to what people are most excited about and to follow the energy in the room.
Frequently Asked Questions
David Horowitz, co-founder and CEO of Retrium, a company with a mission to improve agile retrospectives, suggests starting a retrospective by setting the stage. This will ensure the team is on the same page, with enough time to switch focus from their current work. This could be as simple as asking everyone to share one word that’s on their mind.
What is Agile retrospective?
According to the official definition from the Scrum Guide: “The Agile retrospective is the opportunity for an Agile team to examine itself and define a plan for improvement to be enacted during the next Sprint. ”. It gathers all the active team members, ...
What is the purpose of retrospective in Agile?
The main objective of an Agile retrospective is to identify potential improvements in the way the team works, based on the past weeks’ events. Thus, their success is essential for the well-being (and functioning) of the team in the long run. However, they require a great deal of preparation and some key success factors.
How long does a retrospective last?
Retrospectives usually last for ½ hour to 1 hour. It should always include these three axes: Celebrate successes: a new client, a feature release, a past action identified during the last retrospective that led to the expected results, ….
When should Agile retrospective take place?
Ideally, the Agile retrospective takes place at the end of the sprint, right or soon after the sprint review (and before the next sprint planning). Indeed, you don’t want to wait too long and risk your team members to forget about what happens during the sprint that could be improved.
What is a retrospective in a team?
Retrospectives help identify the small “pebbles in the shoe” of your team that, if unaddressed, can become real frustrations and brakes to the overall productivity. They don’t have to shake everything up. Common actions such as reviewing the DoD (Definition of Done) or changing the time of the daily meeting can have a real positive impact in the long run!
Can you pick ideas from Retromat?
If you want to find inspiration in order to vary your retrospective format, you can pick ideas from Retromat unreservedly. A creative format is not enough. If you want your Agile retrospective to be successful, be careful to these warnings: Amplify the good!
Instructions for running this Play
For remote teams, start by creating a new collaboration document, like a Confluence page or a Trello board. For help, see templates (above)
Follow-up
Are follow-up tasks being completed, or forgotten? Are you getting to the root of your problems? Would a different set of activities help you dig deeper? Retrospectives can be customized—make it your own!
Variations
Create a timeline spanning the past two months and have team members call out significant events. Doing this at the start of the Play helps refresh everyone's memory and sets the stage.
Personal Map
Personal Map is a simple and effective team building activity that gets everyone more familiar with each other. Running...
Opportunity Solution Tree
An opportunity solution tree helps a team describe and explore the opportunities and solutions for achieving a desired outcome....
Strategy DHM
The Strategy DHM activity helps a group of people frame their strategy, looking at it from 3 perspectives: Delight...
SCOR – Strengths, Challenges, Opportunities, Risks
SCOR is a futurospective activity that helps the participants better plan their future based on the perceived strengths and...
What is a retrospective in Agile?
This is also known as the “sprint retrospective”, or “iteration retrospective”, often abbreviated, e.g. “sprint retro”.
What is retrospective in team performance?
A retrospective is intended to reveal facts or feelings which have measurable effects on the team’s performance, and to construct ideas for improvement based on these observations . It will not be useful if it devolves into a verbal joust, or a whining session.