Preparation before Retrospective?
Hi,
lately I had a conversation about Sprint Retro and how could it be speed-up. There was an idea to ask Scrum Team to write down in shared document all good and bad things from Sprint, with ideas how to improve. Everybody will come prepared for the meeting - both to discuss their concerns and concerns of others.
I have very mixed feelings about this concept. Do you have any experience or insights?
This s better than the usual issue of no preparation being done at all. But why is each attendee's preparation work shared? What are the likely implications for pre-emptive solutioning and waste?
It can be very helpful for individual Scrum Team members to log both concerns and highlights throughout the Sprint, especially in Sprint of longer length. It is far to easy to lose details when focused on the effort within the Sprint. It's not about speed; it's about efficiency.
Yes, having a team prepared for Retro is really good thing and that's why we stretched an idea of preparation even further. Why not have team members shared their thoughts and, sometimes pre-emptive, solutions before retro? Then we could talk about each issue, feedback it and decide to apply it or not.
Prons we see are: each person issue will be talked about not just biggest or most urgent; it will be easier to address an elephant in the room; all issues might be put into action plan
Cons are: easy, one person solutions, especially when given by PO or SM; less commitment from some members - 'I don't have anything to add' or 'I just need to write "whatever" down' approach ; at the beginning writing down feedback might be difficult and some insight won't be shared.
I just wonder if we don't miss and entire idea of Retro there? It's still Inspect and Adapt but usually scenarios are very much about collaboration and fun. And this one - not so much.
Or maybe you have some nice scenarios for short retrospective? I wonder if there are any effective exercises that would take about 30'? We have short, weeks long Sprint and there is much pressure to 'make it fast'.
As the team`s scrum master I usually prepare the retrospectives. I send an e-mail with the agenda and a link to a prepared trello board to the team members. This is for the team members (some join remotely) to test the link, and if they have all rights on the board and to let them roughly know what kind of retro they can expects.
What format and what "direction" or goal the retros has I try to leave open as long as possible in order to be able to react to the really current issues of the team.
In my experience, this modus operandi makes the retros more efficient because everybody can check technical issues beforehand and I don`t have to spend to much time in explaining the format of the retro.
Preparation is on my side mostly.
This sprint i try for the first time to let the team collect topics they want to discuss during the sprint.
But just to have a bit of a variation. Let`s see if there is any difference in the output :-)
As Alan touched on beware of speeding up the retro. If folks are asking or implying the retro needs to be faster or doubt the value there may be a problem. It is there to take a break from development and look inward and focus on how the team
can take actions to improve based on analysis of the past. Yes it can be done elsewhere but be careful then you can possibly be slowing down your development a simple issue or conversation can easily expand. I also understand it can also sap energy away from introverts like myself but it's what we have to do to improve.
@Aleksandra If collaboration or engagement is declining then that is certainly a concern. Most people when noting their issues and highlights will naturally also have ideas about how to improve or maintain the observations; there's no need to explicitly develop next steps prior to the Sprint Retrospective.
usually scenarios are very much about collaboration and fun
I've been in an organization where some Scrum Masters ran (controlled not facilitated) every Sprint Retrospective. The benefits decreased as team members felt like the SM was just another manager. There was a focus on enjoyment with resulted in the purpose of the event not being met. For example, activities were planned for the entire time-box which were fun for the team but no improvements were identified and no action plans were created.
As discussed above, if team is spending some time to prepare for retro, do you reduce retro meeting time by some average amount? If team is spending more efforts/time than allowed by time box, are we not making it efficient? (when it may look like fast)