Retrospective

Each matter raised ought to be discussed if a meaningful action is to be taken. In other words if the ability to inspect is compromised then adaptation cannot be effective.

What are you doing to group the various concerns, or otherwise rank them so that focus can be applied within the Retrospective timebox?

@Kanishk: yep, (how) do you group the different concerns on the board? 

In theory a way of doing this is as follows:

- each team member puts her/his concerns on the board. 

- based on similarity the concerns are then grouped in just one concern (if possible)

- then the team members vote on each group. 

- based on the grouped and voted concerns action items are created. 

Discussing/creating action items: I've seen that some people do not discuss or create actions for the "Continue" section. IMO, this is really dependent on the concern content. 

Also, I use different approaches, depending what the team feels more comfortable with: 

- for one of the teams the members just put the concerns on the board. Then and I go through all of them and clarify and discuss them before voting. 

- for other teams, each team member explains each concern as he/she adds it to the board to the corresponding category. 

Thanks so much for your replies..... Ian & Cristian.

So It means I should ask team to only vote for 'Stop' & 'Start' swimline and not 'Continue'. Once the dot voting is done I will prioritize some points and discuss. Please confirm if this approach is fine. I know this varies from team to team but I just want to follow a standard approach and will adapt going forward depending upon the outcome.

I wanted to perform this retrospective with my team after the current sprint.

Many thanks in advance for replying.

--Regards,

  kanishk Tandon 

Just as you said, there is no "one size fits all". Myself, if I see something important/relevant in the continue section, I will discuss it. 

And agile means while(true) {doing, inspecting and adapting}. :) 

Start with the approach which you find more suitable for the team, and adjust as you go along.

I personally prefer to also change the retrospective from one time to the other, using a weather report or purchase review to it. 

Also I have no idea how long your sprints are, but if you do the exact same thing every time, even if it works, might get boring. 

A good resource for retrospective ideas is: https://retromat.org/en/ 

My advice: go with what you describe and see how it goes. And after you can write here again and get more input. 

Perfect!

Thanks so much Cristian for your opinion and advice.

--Regards,

  Kanishk Tandon

I agree with the comments above but want to make sure that the Continue is not thrown out completely. The continue column will tell you what the team actually likes and sees the value in so they want to keep doing it. You don't need a lot of discussion on these most of the time but they need to be called out.

+1 Curtis.

You want to not only highlight the issues facing the team, but also identify the practices that are benefiting the team, so that you can make a point of repeating them in the future.