Sprint Retrospective

Sprint retrospective — what is it?

According to the research results published in the article "Do team and individual debriefs enhance performance? A meta-analysis," teams that regularly and diligently perform Sprint retrospectives are about 25% more effective.

This 25% difference is not a coincidence, and surely it's not a cosmetic difference that can be ignored without the feeling of losing a chance or opportunity.

The more so that the essence of agile methodologies is a quick and effective adaptation to changes.

Let us remind you once again — the Sprint retrospective is about self-improvement, summarizing, analyzing, looking critically, and spotting problems.

Or metaphorically speaking, the Sprint retrospective is about asking proper questions and formulating adequate answers.

The Sprint retrospective is the last event of a Sprint cycle and a moment that aims to develop means and methods that will allow you to achieve better results and improve processes, activities, and tools.

The basic premise of the Sprint retrospective reads as follows: the workflow can always be improved. That's why it's worth taking the time and energy to summarize everything at the end of a sprint (before the sprint review meeting).

Entering a new sprint without finding the time and willingness to perform a retrospective indicates that the team will repeat problems.

Thanks to the retrospective, every subsequent sprint — in theory and practice — will be more:

• Productive
• Smooth
• Conflict-free
• Efficient
• Rational
• Up-to-date
• Punctual
• Harmonious
• Pleasant.

It's worth remembering that the retrospective is a relatively cheap, quick, and easy-to-implement "method" that aims to increase efficiency and improve work atmosphere, relationships, and communication.

The Sprint retrospective meeting is organized by a Scrum Master just after the completion of a sprint. Its purpose is to:

• Bring together all important stakeholders
• Collect feedback from the team (observations, opinions, evaluations, comments, positive and negative suggestions)
• Compile data
• Discuss data and feedback
• Prepare a plan for work optimization that will be implemented in the upcoming sprint.

It's worth emphasizing here that disadvantages are as crucial as advantages.

This is because the goal is full self-awareness of the teams — their strong sides and those that need correction and improvement.

Hence, the Sprint retrospective meetings should answer the following:

• What went well and won't require improvement?
• What went relatively well but will require improvement?
• What went badly, why did it happen, and how to fix it?
• Which of the problems are the most pressing and require changing in the next sprint?
• Which of the problems aren't so pressing that it's necessary to solve them as soon as possible?

Prioritizing problems is extremely important because, as you might easily guess, not all issues can be fixed, improved, and solved immediately.

Thus, ranking is essential.

Naturally, the length of the sprint results in more data, processes, actions, interactions, and effects to summarize, evaluate and discuss.

The time for the summary and correction should be optimal.

It can't be too short because there is a risk of omitting problems or treating them superficially. In turn, a too-long retrospective can result in discouragement.

A significant element is also the atmosphere during a meeting.

All stakeholders should feel safe. The Sprint retrospective isn't a tool for evaluation or discipline but a time for insight, understanding, and adaptation.

It serves to support, motivate, engage, and integrate.

According to the authors of the article "Agile Retrospectives," published on the Atlassian blog:

"The retrospective should be a positive, energizing experience for your team. It helps team members share important feedback, let go of frustrations, and work together to come up with solutions."

Furthermore, the Sprint retrospective is also beneficial for facilitators who, thanks to it, have an opportunity to better and more profoundly understand how the team:

• Works
• What challenges it faces
• Reacts to challenges, successes, failures, and motivators
• Cooperates internally and externally
• Communicates
• Sees its potential, resources
• Sets goals and divides them into tasks.

Usually, a Facilitator is a Scrum Master or a Product Owner. A best practice that is simultaneously recommended is to rotate this role throughout the team.

Lists should be ordered according to the abovementioned rule of relevance, importance, and immediacy.

When analyzing individual items from the list, it's worth remembering to pay less attention to people and more to results.

An essential element of the Sprint retrospective is an Action Plan that should be implemented consistently by a precisely defined "owner."

How to perform a retrospective?

The Sprint retrospective may seem like a tedious, routine, and for some, even unnecessary activity that adds little to the organization's operations.

It's a harmful approach that's not worth following.

Of course, it's true that the effectiveness of the Sprint retrospective largely depends on the attitude of a Scrum Master, team members, and other stakeholders.

How it is carried out is also crucial, including whether any techniques are used to streamline the event and support the process of collecting and evaluating feedback.

To fulfill its role, the Sprint retrospective can't be treated as:

• Casual meetings — breaks from work
• Necessity — as a meeting that needs to happen, but it's not worth engaging in it
• Form of exchanging resentments, accusations
• Meeting for scolding, judging, holding accountable, or competing.

Retrospectives should be performed in line with the adopted agenda based on a predictable, repetitive structure that should include the following:

• The opening of the retrospective — defining the goals
• Collecting data
• Aggregating observations, comments, and suggestions
• Planning actions
• The closing of the retrospective.

There are many techniques and methods for performing Sprint retrospectives, and their common denominator is making the meeting more attractive and effective and activating participants by increasing their engagement.

The most commonly used methods during Sprint retrospectives include the following:

• Start, Stop, Continue Retrospective — in which every team member determines what the team started doing, what it should stop doing, and what it should continue to do.
• Surprised Worried Inspired Retrospective — allows you to simultaneously focus on the future and past and determine surprising, worrisome, or inspiring issues.
• Hands on Deck Retrospective — in which the team takes on the role of the ship's crew and tries to discover what parts of the work of a given role are liked and which are disliked and burdensome.
• Hero's Journey Retrospective — it enables you to determine the team's future, set long-term goals and increase loyalty and group integrity.
• Original 4 Retrospective — helps determine and understand the strengths and weaknesses of team members and the team as a whole.
• Hopes and Fears Retrospective — allows team members to share their hopes and fears before the next sprint.
• Speed Car Retrospective — enables team members to focus on elements that will allow the team to work faster and more efficiently in the future.
• SWOT Retrospective — helps indicate strengths and weaknesses of the team and determine opportunities and threats.
• Hot Air Balloon Retrospective — points out things that slow the team's work and those that speed it up.
• T-Shirt Sizing Scale — helps you plan and estimate the efficiency and allows you to track how much time and work it will take to complete a given task.
• Glad Sad Mad Retrospective — allows you to improve the team's morale and indicate what made them glad, sad, and mad during a sprint.
• Mountain Climber Retrospective — enables you to change the perspective, look at the project from a distance, and define the various aspects of the project as climbing.
• Three Little Pigs Retrospective — lets you see the project as one of the three houses from the story "The Three Little Pigs" and thus determine what is solid and what can collapse.
• Working & Stuck — helps you determine what works (even if not perfectly) and doesn't work in the project.

The effectiveness of the Sprint retrospective doesn't only depend on a specific technique but also an approach.

The attitude that accompanies team members during tasks and the retrospective is crucial.

Especially during the retrospective, you should:

• Maintain a certain margin of leniency and tolerance — in other words, you shouldn't be too critical and strict.
• Optimally approach the number of things that need changing — it's better to change one or two things satisfactorily than introduce many changes simultaneously because it creates chaos and increases stress.
• Be aware that the motivation must be dosed throughout the project and that it is an exhaustible and hardly renewable resource.
• Strive to solve problems and conflicts in an unbiased way devoid of personal motivations.
• Maintain mutual respect, understanding, and trust.
• Focus on cooperation, eliminate rivalry and competition
• Celebrate failures — mistakes are a source of knowledge and are very enlightening.