Making Your Sprint Retrospectives More Effective

The purpose, timebox and participants of the Sprint Retrospective are well defined. However,  Scrum Teams sometimes fall into antipatterns that diminish their value and waste everyone’s time.

Common antipatterns include:

• Scrum Team members do not actively participate - When Scrum Team members are passive during a Sprint Retrospective, the Scrum Master will often step in and pull information from the team, or will come up with their own list of areas for improvement
• Issues are not raised during the Retrospective, but team members grumble about them outside the meeting
• Participants do not recall issues that came up during the Sprint so the issues are not raised during the Retrospective
• The team becomes complacent and says that there is nothing they can improve  
• Lack of honesty and communication - Often because they’d like to minimize conflict or because there is a lack of trust on the team
• Recurring items, nothing changes - When the same impediments or ineffective team interactions are identified in multiple Sprint Retrospectives, it’s an indicator that nothing is being done to rectify the problems or make improvements
• Team focuses on items they cannot improve - Some teams spend too much time focused on items that are outside of the team’s domain and influence
• Participants are told they are “being negative” when they identify items that need to be improved - This generally results in participants being unwilling to make further observations
• The Sprint Retrospective turns into a “blame game” where the focus is on people rather than the process
• The team is not comfortable with the Product Owner attending the Sprint Retrospective - Often this happens when the Product Owner acts as though they are a manager of the team, rather than as a team member
• There is no plan for conducting or facilitating the Sprint Retrospective or it’s  conducted in the same way each time - Participants may find the Retrospective boring, stale, unfocused and a waste of time if they either don’t plan how they will run the Retrospective or they mechanically follow a three question format:
  • What went well? 
  • What was a challenge?
  • What could be improved?

Tips for Strong Sprint Retrospectives:

Breaking the antipatterns listed above help create strong and effective Sprint Retrospectives. Consider the following tips:

• Make certain that everyone participates and has a voice. Be cognizant of the communications differences among team members; some may be introverts and others may be extroverts. Also, if a team member acts in an unruly way, address the issue right away.
• Encourage an environment where team members are eager to improve their working environment.
• Encourage strong psychological safety and a culture of radical transparency and openness where every team member can be honest about issues in the team’s working practices, even if they may create some (healthy) conflict.
• Make certain that items identified during the Retrospective are those that will actually improve the team’s working processes or environment.
• Act on the items identified and make certain that the entire team knows how the items were resolved.
• If the team identifies an overwhelming number of improvement items, consider having the team prioritize the improvements and then improve on 1-2 each Sprint.
• Make certain that the Scrum Team has a clear understanding of what issues are not within their circle of influence and identify issues that are being resolved by others outside the team. Be transparent about the resolution status of those issues. 
• Ask Scrum Team members to keep a list of issues that occurred during the Sprint so that they can be raised during the Retrospective.
• Don’t forget that the state of the Retrospective itself should be part of the Retrospective. Identify ways to improve the Retrospective.
• Identify who will facilitate the Retrospective and encourage the use of varying facilitation techniques.

Resources:

Learning Series

Frequently Asked Questions on Continuous Improvement for Scrum Masters

In order for Scrum Masters to fulfill their accountability they must enable the team to continuously improve its practices within the Scrum Framework. Learn about how a Scrum Master can instill continuous improvement mindset through an exploration of some frequently asked questions that we’ve encountered from Scrum Teams.

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