Retros:

The heart of agile is inspect and adapt; retrospective meetings ('retros') help make sure we do that

It is good practice—some would say, essential to doing Agile properly—to hold a “retrospective meeting” (or “retro” for short) at the end of each iteration (aka “sprint”).

The purpose of a retro can be summed up as:

• identify what’s going well and what’s not going well
• figure out how to turn up the good, and turn down the bad

On the Agile101 Guide the “every sprint” retro is called the heartbeat retros. We’ll consider these terms to mean the same thing:

• Sprint Retro
• Iteration Retro
• Heartbeat Retro

Milestone Retro vs. Sprint Retro

The Agile 101 Guide also meantions a longer-form milestone retro which is held less often—maybe once or twice a year, for example—which the team reaches a major milestone in their product development. Because of the short length of the 10-week quarter at UCSB, in the context of CS48, we might do a milestone retro, if at all, at the end of the entire course, to reflect on the course as a whole.

Retro Templates

A “retro template” is a high-level outline for structuring a retro. Here are some popular templates:

• Start/Stop/Continue

  the team reflects on

  • what activites want to stop doing (because they aren’t helpful)
  • what activities they want to start doing (because they think it will help)
  • what activities they should continue (because they are working well)

• Darby/Larsen 5-Step Retro

  This retro template, introducted by Esther Derby and Dianna Larsen in the book Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great has five steps:

  • Step 1: Set the Stage
  • Step 2: Gather Data
  • Step 3: Generating Insights
  • Step 4: Decide What To Do
  • Step 5: Close the Retro
• This article on 5 fun sprint retro ideas with templates covers Start/Stop/Continue from above, plus four others:
  • Glad/Sad/Mad
  • Sailboat
  • 4 L’s: Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed-For
  • Quick Retro

Exercises

In addition to the templates above, there are also many exercises that can be used:

• The website Retro-mat contains over 100 activities in English (and six other languages including 中文) that retro leaders can choose from.

• An Agile Coach named Ben Linders has an Article on DZone about facilitiating retros, along with a Retro Exercises Toolbox on his website.

• Spotify (yes, that Spotify) has a Spotify Retro Kit that they’ve put together to help their teams run successful retros.

Many more links are listed below.

Choosing Exercises

The facilitator of the retro has the responsibility for choosing practices that they think will be effective for their team, taking into account factors such as:

• the personalities of the team members
• the level of familiarity they have with the retro process
• the setting in which the retro is taking place
• the particular challenges facing the team

Big Picture Values

It’s helpful to choose practices that are fun and engaging, and to change up the practices so that folks don’t get bored with the exercise. However, even more important is to focus on these big picture values:

• Try to structure activities so that everyone’s voices are heard
  • Help folks that are more vocal to keep their sharing short and make space
  • Help folks that are less vocal to feel comfortable speaking up
• It is helpful for the facilitator to focus on facilitating not participating
  • The facilitator may have their own opinions
  • While conducting the retro, they may like to set those aside
  • Instead, consider focusing ONLY on helping the other participants voices be heard.

Guides for retrospective facilitators

I would not suggest that you read ALL of these articles before running your first retro—that could lead to information overload.

Instead, I suggest skimming through until you find ONE that resonates for you and gives you a sense that you can take this on successfully. Then go back and revisit the other articles later as you get more experience.

• Lauren Moon’s article on how Philip Rogers, a Scrum Master at National Public Radio, leads retros.
• Seven Best Practices For Retro Facilitators by Jonathan Berger, on the Pivotal Blog.
  • Discusses explaining the retro format, taking verbatim notes, categorizing without introducing bias, making action items actionable, falsifiable, and assigning them to specific individuals, and the importance of confidentiality.
• How to lead a successful project retrospective from the Lucid Meetings Blog
  • Key points are: importance of having enough time, setting a positive tone, establishing safety, keeping proposed changes small, how to prepare, how to run the meeting, what questions to ask.
• How To Run A Sprint Retrospective That Knocks Your Team’s Socks Off by Alexa Huston on the TheDigitalProjectManager.com
  • Key points: Dealing with apathy, emotions, lack of conversation. Some tips: simplicity, novelty, focus, action-oriented, helpfulness of outside facilitation
• Three popular ways to run a productive Retrospective by Brandi Gratis on the Backlog.com Blog, covers:
  • Start, Stop, Continue
  • Good, Bad, Better, Best
  • Darby/Larsen five-step retro.
• Seven ways to make retros fun and engaging, an article by Madhavi Ledalla in the SolutionsIQ Learning Library