What Went Badly....Was it your retrospective

Retrospectives are key to continuous improvement and are one of the main (or only) ways every other aspect of your organisation is going to be improved….so why are industry standard retrospectives so pathetic?

I’ve previously discussed alternative retro formats here which can help you get more information, make them more enjoyable and generally think from a different perspective.

There are however some aspects beyond format that you may want to check you are considering.

Safety Checks
Does everyone feel like they can truely express themself? Are there levels of management, aggressive contributors, overbearing senior developers or just enough negativity that they can’t state their true opinions? Keep an eye out for this, ask people outside of the retros and even miss one yourself

Directive
Along the lines of the above. Read the retrospective directive

Issue surfacing
You can find ways for people to list their issues and positive points in advance of the session (ideally when issues arise) which is useful.

Lots of scrum documentation recommends doing a retro per sprint. This timeframe may be good for you, but it does tend to mean people only focus on issues relative to the sprint. If you want people to think outside of that x week window then you may need to encourage it, or schedule them differently.

Formats
If you just list “What Went Well”, “What Went Badly”, “Lessons Learned” then the mentality of people will always be the same. Read this, you won’t regret it.

Voting
It’s unlikely you have time to discuss everything that has been raised in enough detail. Let people vote (maybe 3 each) so you ensure you are talking about the most pressing things.

You may heve to group similar items quickly to aid this. Isn’t it interesting how often some people have raised something in a positive light thats others raise negatively.

Timeboxing
Don’t talk about one subject the whole time if interest is dropping. You can set a time for 5 or 10 minutes and use voting (thumbs up or down works) to decide whether to continue on that topic

Actions (with reviews)
The actions. The most important bit…don’t forget this. If you don’t fix things they’ll be on the board next time. Read more about making them effective in my previous blog

Also, don’t forget to check if you completed the actions from the last retro. Carry them over if not and briefly assess why there are done

Remote If your team are based in multiple location don’t let this put you off. Use tools like trello or collaborative editing word processors to gather discussion points

Parking lot
If your sick of talking about a beer fridge everytime then have a list of banned items.

Lead conversation
Senior people, don’t dictate solutions. Can you lead people towards what you think is appropriate. If it’s someones idea they may have more ownership of it, but more importantly the conversation and realisation where they get to this will help people gain a deeper understanding of the reasoning.

Other resources
Finally, there are many other resources available online, but one of the best is these two very experienced people talking about retrospectives in this podcast.

I’d love any advice that you think I’ve missed

Hope this helps