What Every Manager Needs to Know About the Sprint Retrospective
The sprint retrospective meeting, as every Scrum team member knows, is the most important ceremony in the Scrum framework. It’s where the team comes together to reflect on the past iteration, identify challenges, and decide how to improve in the future. It seems simple enough in theory, but the reality of conducting a proper sprint retrospective can be intimidating to new managers or even veteran ones who have trouble facilitating these meetings effectively. This guide will help you understand what happens at each stage of the sprint retrospective and how to facilitate it so that it’s beneficial to everyone involved.
What is a sprint retrospective meeting?
The sprint retrospective is a meeting that takes place at the end of every sprint (usually a period of time of two weeks for Scrum teams). During a sprint retrospective, each team member reflects on what went well during that sprint and what could be improved upon. The team then creates action items and determines whether any adjustments need to be made in their work processes. This session helps keep teams focused on continuous improvement . While some companies meet only once per sprint, more agile organizations hold multiple retrospective meetings over time.
Why do we need a sprint retrospective?
A retrospective is a time when all members of a team gather together and take a look at what worked well during a given sprint, and what needs improvement. It’s an opportunity for every team member to focus on efficiency. As long as everyone’s open-minded and creative, you can use retrospectives to make sure you continue making strides toward your big goal.
How to run a successful retrospective meeting?
An effective retrospective meeting should start with the setting of what we call “a safe environment”. The team members must feel comfortable, and safe, to discuss what went well and what didn’t go so well in their last sprint.
The second step will be to set everyone’s expectations while defining the retrospective parameters. What are the topics to be discussed? Make sure to articulate them clearly and aim to find solutions instead of blaming.
Follow an agenda – having an agenda is like having a roadmap. You can always return to it and make sure the conversation is on track.
Because retrospectives give team members a sense of ownership over their work, many find that they’re motivated to do even better work in future sprints. But running a successful retrospective can be tricky for some managers or team leaders. Fortunately, there are several formats, templates and exercises you can follow. Here are our top 4 retrospectives that will assist you in running an effective retrospective meeting.
The four different types of retro you can run
1. What Went Well retrospective
This one is the most common retrospective, where the team members discuss what went well during their previous sprint, including what didn’t go well.
2. Start, Stop Continue retrospective
This format allows you to generate ideas quickly and easily.
The main questions to be asked are: What should we start doing, What should we stop doing and What should we continue to do, while the answers for each will be your action items for the next sprint.
3. The Pirate Ship retrospective
This is a simple retro format, very similar to the KALM retrospective, in which the team discusses the last sprint while looking at a drawing of a pirate ship, an anchor, rocks and wind. The goal here is for the team to tell what had slowed them down and what had driven them forward.
4. The 4Ls retrospective
In this 4 columns retrospective the scrum master instructs the team members to write what they Liked, what they Learned, what they Lacked and what they are Longing for.
Common problems during retro
Making big decisions in retrospectives is easy, but making small day-to-day improvements is hard. Anytime there’s a discussion of changes to make or things that went wrong, it’s often easier for people to focus on their faults and problems rather than on their strengths and opportunities. You can combat these tendencies by keeping a running list of improvement suggestions throughout your sprint; when you get into a discussion about things that went wrong, you’ll have plenty of ideas already at hand.
The most common mistake managers make during a sprint retrospective: While it may be tempting to check out and leave your team alone during a sprint retrospective, resist that urge. Managers need to lead by example and be actively involved in all aspects of project planning, including backlog grooming, daily stand-ups and sprint review/retrospectives. Additionally, make sure everyone on your team has been invited to give feedback during these events; nobody likes a two-way street.
Finally, never participate in a retrospective while you’re tired or distracted—it will definitely become obvious and could have an adverse effect on your team’s morale. Team members are counting on you to help them improve.
Even though you know what’s going wrong, you can still ask follow-up questions that highlight positive behavior as well as areas for improvement. For example: Thanks for sharing what went wrong with our product rollout last week—what did we do right?
Final thoughts
The sprint retrospective is an important part of Scrum because it helps remove impediments that are slowing down work. These impediments can stem from misaligned team goals, unclear business requirements, or dysfunctional interpersonal relationships. So don’t skip your regular retrospectives! Your team will thank you for helping them get more done in less time.
With a solid foundation in technology, backed by a BIT degree, Lucas Noah has carved a niche for himself in the world of content creation and digital storytelling. Currently lending his expertise to Creative Outrank LLC and Oceana Express LLC, Lucas has become a... Read more