Suggestion of improvement on the new Nexus Guide around Nexus Sprint Retrospective event
I found during my lecture of the new Nexus Guide that on the Nexus Sprint Retrospective, there is some possible misunderstanding around that pragraphe and phrase put in bold :
The purpose of the Nexus Sprint Retrospective is to plan ways to increase quality and effectiveness across the whole Nexus. The Nexus inspects how the last Sprint went with regards to individuals, teams, interactions, processes, tools, and its Definition of Done. In addition to individual team improvements, the Scrum Teams’ Sprint Retrospectives complement the Nexus Sprint Retrospective by using bottom-up intelligence to focus on issues that affect the Nexus as a whole.
I interpreted this phrase like; there was first a nexus sprint retrospective with everyone and then individual retrospective for each Scrum Teams (tho it is not what is described on the global schema of the nexus framework, like for the Nexus Daily Scrum and Daily Scrum).
For me this phrase is prescriptive, it indicates to have scrum teams sprint retrospective and not just a nexus sprint retrospective... It's one way to do it, and may be not the best... oh well you know it depends ! :)
But... I guess global improvement must be prior to local improvement (It's what I think but I know I am not alone :))
There fore I suggest an improvement, to be less prescriptive and/or ambiguous :
The purpose of the Nexus Sprint Retrospective is to plan ways to increase quality and effectiveness across the whole Nexus. The Nexus inspects how the last Sprint went with regards to individuals, teams, interactions, processes, tools, and its Definition of Done. By using bottom-up intelligence, the Nexus Sprint Retrospective focus on issues that affect the Nexus as a whole, and individual team improvements may arise doing so.
Anyone got the same feeling than me, that there is something not just quite right with this paragraphe? What do you think about the way I put it ?
it indicates to have scrum teams sprint retrospective and not just a nexus sprint retrospective.
That's right. Each team in a Nexus fully implements Scrum and has its own Retrospective, by means of which that team's implementation will be inspected and adapted. The Nexus Guide makes it clear that there may also be opportunities arising from this inspection which are relevant to the Nexus (i.e. bottom-up intelligence).
First the NIT has a retro, then each team have their retro which includes what was brought up in the NITs retro, and then the NIT have a final retro in order to discuss points brought up by each team, hence bottom-up intelligence.
Previous iterations of the Nexus Guide described the retrospective in the way that Scott did, where it was a three phase activity. The first phase was the whole Nexus, the second phase was the individual Scrum teams, and the third phase was the whole Nexus again. However, the 2021 revision of the Nexus Guide removed this structure, leaving the statement that requires improvements to be carried out at both the individual team as well as the Nexus level.
I don't think that this is prescriptive, and it's definitely less prescriptive than previous iterations of the Nexus Guide. It's just a reminder that, when you have multiple teams working together, improvements to the way of working cannot be centered on each team as an individual entity. The teams have to come together and find ways to improve how the teams coordinate and communicate across those team boundaries.
With the latest iteration of the Nexus Guide, you could implement the three-phase approach from previous iterations. Alternatively, you could also implement a two-phase approach like the one found in LeSS where each team has a retrospective and then an overall retrospective. However, you may have to take a different timing approach than in LeSS, since the retrospective is complete prior to the Sprint Planning for the upcoming iteration. If neither of these approaches work, you can devise your own strategies. However, in order to "do Nexus", you must make sure that you are improving on both a team and a Nexus level.