Retrospectives - acolorbright/handbook GitHub Wiki

“At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.”
Agile Manifesto

In order to continuously become better in what we’re doing, we regularly reflect on our way of working. The format that’s used for this is called a Retrospective.

A Retrospective typically is a 90 minute meeting, held at the end of each sprint. In the meeting the team looks back at the previous sprint and decides what and how they want to change in order to improve.

Retrospectives aren’t project audits. They are not about placing blame and creating more work, but rather helping individuals and team members learn and improve¹. Retrospectives focus not only on the design and development process but on the team and team issues².

There are a number of retrospective techniques available which we use depending on the phase of the project, the mood and so on. Using a technique helps keep the meeting on track and ensures everyone can voice their thoughts. Examples for retrospective techniques are:

• 4 Ls: Liked – Learned – Lacked – Longed For
• Start, Stop, Continue

Good resources to find retrospective techniques are:

• Fun Retrospectives
• Retromat
• Retrospectives Workout (eBook)
• Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great (Book, eBook)

The retrospective is facilitated by a member of the team (often a Scrum master, but not necessarily). When team members are facilitating the retrospective, we rotate the facilitator duties with each retrospective. The facilitator’s job is to:

• Pick a retrospective technique and prepare the meeting
• Make sure the retrospective happens and every team member attends it
• Host the retrospective: Explain the technique, keep an eye on the time, make sure discussions don’t go out of hand
• Capture Action Items (if that’s a part of the chosen retrospective technique) and make sure they’re being assigned
• Share Action Items (e.g. in the team’s Slack channel)
• Nominate the facilitator for the next retrospective
• Follow up on Action Items with Action Item owners during the following sprint
• Flag issues with Action Items in the next retrospective

Please note that in the retrospective itself, the facilitator also takes part in the discussion as a member of the team.

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¹ Attanasio, Francesco. Retrospectives Workout
² Derby, Esther; Larsen Diana. Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great