Retrospectives are an important part of agile processes. They let your team look back at what they've done and see where they can improve, so they can adjust the way they work. But how do you achieve a successful retrospective? In this article, we talk about the importance of retrospectives and give ideas for how to use them effectively.
Retrospectives can enrich many aspects of working life, but we focus here on software development, as we always do in all articles in our blog.
What is a retrospective?
A retrospective is a meeting that usually occurs at the end of a development sprint and is an opportunity for the team to reflect. Did the collaboration work well or did it cause problems? Are the applicable processes compatible with the team or are they hindering? Are there factors outside our control that are slowing down our progress? Which things worked well? Should external feedback be discussed and considered?
The following questions guide us through a retrospective:
- What are the challenges and obstacles we face as a team.
- What is causing these challenges?
- What steps can we take to improve to eliminate these challenges and obstacles?
So, the goal is to collect information about the team's current or past development cycle and the state of the team's interaction. However, only collecting this information does not help. Considering that simply identifying an issue does not promise improvement, the development of solution approaches and concrete tasks, often called “action items,” is therefore also a goal of retrospectives in everyday work.
These meetings are exclusively reserved for the team. In this context, we consider a team to be a Scrum team or simply a defined number of people who work together on the implementation of product features or similar. This means that no stakeholders or other third parties are invited to these meetings unless it is the team's explicit wish.
Why are retrospectives important?
Retrospectives are essential because they allow the team to learn from mistakes, as well as from successes. They allow the team to identify issues where they can or need to improve their process, knowledge, or collaboration. To change something, you have to see that it needs to be changed. If one isn't directly affected by an issue or problematic situation, this realization usually only comes up in conversations with other team members. It's critical to give these conversations space. Looking back is necessary to make improvements in the future.
Holding these meetings regularly is important and included in most agile frameworks. But even if you aren't using an agile framework, regular retrospectives make perfect sense.
The team can speak freely
Since a retrospective is meant to be a safe place for a team, the Las Vegas rule applies here: what is discussed in the retrospective stays in the retrospective or with the team. The only transparency to external observers should be the action items that are developed as a result of a retrospective.
Talking freely only works if everyone feels comfortable. I have observed repeatedly that new team members often need one or two retrospectives to really feel comfortable. And that's perfectly okay. You might be cautious about what you say if you have never participated in retrospectives before. So give your team time to understand the benefits and positive effects of a retrospective.
In addition to the Las Vegas rule, it is important to remember that criticism must always be constructive and never personal. Personal attacks are not allowed. They can undermine any advantage of the meetings.
Challenges are identified and addressed
In a retrospective, the team can identify all the challenges they have encountered during a sprint or since the last retrospective. Various methods and techniques can be used to achieve this.
Many times, participants have had a topic in mind for a long time and they say it right away. It can be helpful to ask the team to send the moderator topics they know about in advance if they are going to be talked about. The moderator then can prepare specific methods and techniques that he or she feels are appropriate for the analysis. If a list of topics emerges automatically in this way, time can be saved by not planning for the elaboration of topics in the meeting.
Joint solutions are developed
Based on the results from the retrospective, the team can plan and introduce changes to its process and approach. These may involve a small change or a major overhaul. The goal is to improve the way the team works so that it can be more effective and efficient.
Problems can occur in many areas, and possible solutions are just as varied. During a joint discussion, an analysis succeeds faster and better. A key consideration is to include the different perspectives and opinions in the discussion. Only then will a solution be found that will satisfy everyone. Do not miss out on this opportunity.
How do you run a successful retrospective?
When conducting a retrospective, there are several important things to consider. Let's take a closer look at them and use a few tips. Let's assume that you are tasked with organising such a retrospective or that it is part of your role in a team, as is the case with the Scrum Master, for example.
Retrospectives have to be organised differently for each team, so the following paragraphs should serve as a hint to conduct retrospectives successfully. They should not be perceived as a fixed structure.
Clear communication of the rules is important
Clear and simple communication is important before and during a retrospective. There are a few things to point out.
- Stay positive – It's not about finger-pointing or finding the guilty ones for problems. It's about finding ways to improve.
- Stay specific – Be as specific as possible when discussing issues that need improvement. This helps the team focus on specific obstacles and how to change them.
- Stay action-oriented – The goal of a retrospective is to identify actions that can be taken to improve the way the team works and their circumstances and environment.
Make sure you point out these rules at the beginning. During the retrospective, always point out these points if you feel that the discussion could drift or develop in an unpleasant direction.
A well-thought-out agenda and a pleasant atmosphere helps all participants
Note: To learn more about methods and techniques for the individual steps, we recommend taking a look at the planning aids mentioned in the next paragraph.
- Create a pleasant and relaxed atmosphere for the discussion. A successful retrospective won't happen under stress or tension. The facilitator should provide mental relaxation exercises at the beginning. Maybe just ask how everyone in the group is feeling. Or use games to break the ice.
- Collect topics and information with the team about the time between the last retrospective and the current meeting. This can be done with a variety of techniques. As a moderator, you gradually develop a sense of which techniques help a team. This process can be interactive or formal, stimulating conversations or requiring individual work. The important thing is the goal: a collection of topics to be discussed and looked at in more detail later on. Notes documented during a sprint can be used to help and speed up the process of finding topics.
- Analyse the identified problems, obstacles and barriers with the team. There are many different approaches to this as well. You should design this agenda item as you think it works best for your team. Problems can be addressed in writing, visually, interactively, or in any other creative way. The goal here is to bring the core of the issue or problem to the surface. Only then can you decide on action items in the next step.
- Plan actions and make decisions. This is how you lay the foundation for improvements. Make sure that actions are taken as quickly as possible. After all, you want to achieve the fastest possible improvement in circumstances. There are always actions that can be taken care of immediately and do not have to be scheduled into the next sprint. Make sure that the remaining actions are really included in the next Sprint Planning! It is also important that actions and tasks are documented transparently, can be planned and progress can be tracked. Check this progress in the next retrospective!
- Conclude the retrospective with an activity aimed at feedback. It can be a simple question about whether the team liked the retrospective or not. It can also be a round of praise, in which each participant praises the person sitting next to him or her for certain activities or results in the past sprint. Here, too, there are no limits to the imagination. Activities that shift the focus from problems to positive aspects are always good. After all, everyone wants to leave the retrospective with a good feeling.
Planning tools that you can use as an aid
- Retromat: With this tool, you can create your next retro. Agenda points can be exchanged and you can then share the agenda with a generated URL. A great source of inspiration!
- EasyRetro – Random Retrospective Generator: A wide variety of templates for your next retrospective. You can either take the structure suggestions and design each point yourself, or you can use the professional tool from EasyRetro and conduct your retrospective with it.
- Retro.Generator: Like Retromat, one can have activities suggested for each item on the agenda. A benefit of this approach is that they can be filtered according to the operational scenario.
Realistic planning of concrete actions
If actions can't be done ad-hoc, they have to be scheduled for the next sprint or development cycle. Like any other work package, be realistic about the size and amount of work involved. Improvement activities should, of course, be completed within one sprint. If something is too big, break it up into smaller packages that can be improvements on their own.
The bottom line
Conducting a successful retrospective helps teams to learn from mistakes and successes, to identify opportunities for improvement and to make and bring changes to the way they work or in their own environment.
Retrospectives should not only be seen as an instrument of an agile way of working. Regular retrospectives also make sense in traditional working environments.
There is a way to improve cooperation in all companies and industries! So let's use the tools available and make our everyday work easier.
Please let us know in the comments whether you use retrospectives in your team and what experiences you have had with them. Thank you!
Frank is writing for the devlix Blog at https://www.devlix.de/blog
This article was published first here (german): https://www.devlix.de/retrospektiven-die-gegenwart-verstehen-und-die-zukunft-gestalten/
Feature image: Photo by Mark Duffel on Unsplash
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