Team-driven Improvement with Retrospectives

@rachelcdavies @unrulymedia

Agile CoacH

ABOUT YOU

Enjoy working in a team? Enjoyed working in a team?

Team-driven!

Frustrations Sometimes teamwork is difficult ..

Sustainable pace?

“Retrospective?”

•  Looking back over a lifetime of work?

“Retrospective?”

Pioneered  by  Norman  Kerth.    “a  ritual  held  at  the  end  of  a  project  to  learn  from  the  experience  and  to  plan  changes  for  the  next  effort.”  

 Book:  Project  Retrospec:ves    

explains  techniques  for  3  day  off-­‐site  mee:ngs  at  the  end  of  a  project  to  iden:fy  lessons  learned.  

Project Retrospectives

A meeting where a team looks back on a past period of work so that they can learn from their experience and apply this learning to future work.

Retrospectives

Project Timeline

Mining The Time Line for Gold

Use flip-chart to categorize experience •  What has worked well? •  What have we learned? •  What to do differently? •  What is still puzzling? •  What needs further work?

“A discussion of what went right and what went wrong in the Sprint, and what can be done to improve the next Sprint.” 2004  

Cut-down list of questions •  What went well? •  What didn’t go well? •  Actions

Typical Scrum Retrospective

Risk: team judge past events rather than thinking how to react next time around!

Disconnected Cycle?

PO

SM

£££

Agile Retrospective Cycle

From “Agile Retrospectives” by Derby & Larsen

Pitfalls

No time to improve!

Living in the past

Spend too much on looking back, no time to discuss future changes.

Unconnected Ideas

Individuals have ideas for improvement but don’t connect them to team action.

Cloudy Thinking

If team is not clear on what to do then nothing happens

Thinking too big!

Be realistic! How much can you really do next sprint?

No owner

When no one on team champions a change, it gets forgotten

Always the Same Owner

Scrum Master takes on actions for the team rather than supporting team to do actions themselves.

Invisible Actions

Actions from retrospective not visible to team or outside.

Activities that trivialise

Picking on people

Maintain safety

Tips

Meetings require pre-work and follow up!

Hard to learn about creating effective retrospective by being a participant

Care for People

•  Make a safe space •  Diffuse tension •  Bring food and

drinks

Slow Down!

•  People will not talk if you do not listen to them

•  Invite everyone to share what happened

•  Take time to gather the whole story

•  Involve each member of the team

•  Forget about making lists of what went well, etc.

•  Break down into improvement goal and action steps small enough to fit into sprint cycle

•  Prioritise along with other work

•  Review in Scrum meetings

Apply Scrum planning

Experiment! •  Retrospectives are

about learning from experience

•  Experiment and adapt the format to generate new insights

Drop the Timebox? •  Try running your

retrospective without a timebox.

•  If there’s not much to talk about finish early

•  If there’s a lot to talk about it keep going (with plenty of breaks)

Get Outside •  Get out of the office •  Go to the park or the

pub •  Lifts pressure and

generates energy

•  Remember to take notes and photos

Rotate the Facilitator

CONTINUOUS TIMELINE

DISTRIBUTED TEAM

Is there an elephant in the room?

Acknowledge the current state

QUADRANTS

SUPERPOWERS

BOATS

THINKING HATS

WORKING In SMALL GROUPS

SEISMOGRAPH

GRADIENTS

DOT VOTING

DIALOG SHEETS

FUTURESPECTIVE

Be patient

Change Takes Time

WE Are HIRING

Thank you!

www.slideshare.net/RachelDavies/

References •  Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Reviews by Norman L. Kerth

•  Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby & Diana Larsen

•  The Retrospective Handbook by Patrick Kua

•  Collaboration Explained by Jean Tabaka

•  Agile Coaching by Rachel Davies & Liz Sedley •  Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making by Sam Kaner •  Innovation Games by Luke Hohmann

•  http://facstaff.unca.edu/manns/retropatterns.html

•  http://www.retrospectives.com

•  http://www.retrospectivefacilitatorgathering.org/

•  http://xp123.com/xplor/xp0509/index.shtml