I took the summer to study the most recommended book for all agile coaches – Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great.
It’s also my most favorite part in the scrum framework as it can be the most personal ceremony that allows each team member to appreciate AND advocate improvements on the way we work.
Here is my personal breakdown of what I understand about the book and my cheat sheet that I use to plan upcoming retrospectives.
The Simple Objective
As sprint reviews, demos and user test results allow us to evaluate the result of the product, retrospectives allows us to evaluate how the team works.
The Structure
The recommended structure of a retrospective can be divided in 5 parts:
- Set The Stage
- setting the tone of the meeting to ensure that the environment is productive yet safe to express how effective the team works
- Gather Data
- get as much information from individual members and get a shared picture of how we work
- Generate Insights
- from what we shared, what type of trends is recognized to identify big impediments or blockers
- Decide What to Do
- from the identified bad habits, what do we want to commit to do to change for the better
- Close the retrospective
- get feedback on how to improve the retrospective if it has to
My Cheat Sheet
The book provides all the tested and proven exercises that the authors have used to facilitate the workshops. It wouldn’t make much sense to re-write them here. BUT I did create a cheat sheet that gives me an overview of the exercises and where they fit in the 5-part structure. I use this sheet when I am asked to facilitate retrospectives and provide an idea of what I would like to do.
