The retrospective is the time the team spends examining the last iteration, release or project to find what is working well, what are areas of improvement. The retrospective exposes strengths and weakness in the team's processes, interpersonal dynamics, technologies and out of it comes a continuous improvement plan. This week was my first official retrospective and in the spirit of retrospectives, I thought I'd do a retrospective on the retrospective.
The Process
Before I dive in to the specifics of our retrospective, I want to share the process that I'm trying to follow for our meetings. Much of the process comes Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen.
It's actually a very simple progression:
The Process
Before I dive in to the specifics of our retrospective, I want to share the process that I'm trying to follow for our meetings. Much of the process comes Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen.
It's actually a very simple progression:
- Set the stage
- Gather data
- Analyze the data
- Decide what to do
- Close the retrospective
This is where the book is really helpful for me. At least half the book is dedicated to activities a retrospective leader can use in each portion of the retrospective. The activities provide focus and keep the meeting both on topic and progressing toward its desired end. This is not easy to do and it is both an art and a skill. I'm hoping to improve as a leader the more I practice - having ideas and inspiration helps.
Our Focus
Since we had just come from Agile training, I wanted to focus on getting better at what we had learned and find the areas where we could reinforce our strengths and improve on our weaknesses. I was surprised at how well this set our agenda and direction for the coming weeks and led to some concrete improvement experiments which are already paying off.
Since we had just come from Agile training, I wanted to focus on getting better at what we had learned and find the areas where we could reinforce our strengths and improve on our weaknesses. I was surprised at how well this set our agenda and direction for the coming weeks and led to some concrete improvement experiments which are already paying off.
Setting the Stage
In a retrospective, it's important to get everyone engaged early as the input of all team members is vital for success. This is particularly challenging for us as we have a member of the team, Erwin, who is not co-located and must participate via web conferencing.
In a retrospective, it's important to get everyone engaged early as the input of all team members is vital for success. This is particularly challenging for us as we have a member of the team, Erwin, who is not co-located and must participate via web conferencing.
After introducing the meeting's focus and going over the agenda, I asked each team member to share their thoughts from the Agile training or, for Erwin, his thoughts on our first iteration. This led to a frank discussion of the training which was valuable for me, especially since their experiences were much different than mine. We spent about ten minutes on this activity.
Gathering the Data
Once we finished the stage setting exercise, it was time to move into data gathering. It is counterintuitive, but most of the meeting is spent in the data gathering and analysis portions. Since our focus was our implementation of Agile, I had the team list every Agile practice they could think of. This seemed like a fairly non-threatening activity that allowed us to throw a bunch of terms and phrases on the board and also pull out what things most "stuck" from our training. This took five or ten minutes before we ran out of things to add.
Areas of Improvement:
- I should have limited the activity to five minutes and time-boxed it. This keeps things moving along and helps compel people to contribute because of artificial urgency.
- I should introduce each activity and its purpose. Team members need to know why they are doing something and what the intended outcome is.
This activity was foundational for the next one, which was to vote on those terms on the board (actually a list in a Word document we were sharing online) that were most important to focus on for the week. Everyone had four votes to use as they desired - four on everything, one spread across four items or any combination they wanted. My goal was to identify those areas most important to the team and begin to narrow down where our improvement would be focused for the week.
I placed asterisks next to each item a person voted for until we had all voted. We now had several ideas with one or more vote. Looking at the list we noticed that we had about five items with two or more votes, so we decided to take those as our focal areas. This activity took about five minutes.
I placed asterisks next to each item a person voted for until we had all voted. We now had several ideas with one or more vote. Looking at the list we noticed that we had about five items with two or more votes, so we decided to take those as our focal areas. This activity took about five minutes.
Areas of Improvement:
- Ideally I would use sticky dots on a flip chart or marker on a board, but having a remote member makes this challenging. The phone works but it would be better to find creative ways of engaging everyone.
Analyzing the Data
Now we had some data to look at and I wanted to go deeper so that we could find which area would give us the most value as a focus of improvement. We took our five items and put them on the board in a radar graph which looked like the spokes of a wheel. I asked each team member rate the items from zero to ten in two areas: how are we doing in this area and how important is this area to our success for the coming week. Everyone placed a green dot on the spokes for the former and a red dot on the latter. Obviously, Erwin couldn't do this, so he put a colored number next to each item in the shared Word document. This took about five minutes.
Now we had some data to look at and I wanted to go deeper so that we could find which area would give us the most value as a focus of improvement. We took our five items and put them on the board in a radar graph which looked like the spokes of a wheel. I asked each team member rate the items from zero to ten in two areas: how are we doing in this area and how important is this area to our success for the coming week. Everyone placed a green dot on the spokes for the former and a red dot on the latter. Obviously, Erwin couldn't do this, so he put a colored number next to each item in the shared Word document. This took about five minutes.
Looking at the board, it was clear that two areas were most prominent: communication and defining "done done". I asked the team which item we should focus on first and we all agreed that communication should be first. I then moved on to my next activity which was designed to give us improvement actions for the next iteration. This was a rookie mistake.
Areas of Improvement:
Areas of Improvement:
- I used the radar graph to move us into the decision-making activity. This kept the meeting moving toward its intended conclusion, but missed an opportunity to go deeper on the topic of communication. I should have spent time asking questions about why communication was most prominent, where were we falling short and communication techniques were working. This would have been useful in exposing healthy or harmful team dynamics, areas where the team felt we were lacking and given us a much stronger improvement plan.
- Be sure to take time to go deep and really analyze the data. There is a healthy balance between keeping the meeting moving and making it truly valuable. Don't sacrifice the latter for the former.
Deciding What To Do
The next activity was a brainstorming activity. I liked this one because I could easily time box it, it could be done individually and out of it we could gather an actionable list of items. I set a few ground rules (aim for quantity, don't filter, don't judge, be wild and creative), gave everyone ten minutes and told them to write as many ideas about communication as they could. Ten minutes seemed long, but I wanted to give people time to think and write (or type).
At the end of the ten minutes I gathered up all the ideas on a shared spreadsheet so we could look at them and begin filtering. I didn't anticipate how difficult it would be to come up with filters, but the team did a great job coming up with a few such as: provides value to team and is no (or little) work (e.g. simple to implement).
It was difficult to filter our list but in the end after a discussion we came up with four things we could do this week to improve communication: use IM (we're mostly an email shop), look into better co-location of team members, a weekly informal lunch and end-of-day check-outs. After two days, I can say we've implemented two of the four (IM and check-outs) and it has definitely improved communication. This activity took about twenty minutes.
Areas of Improvement
The next activity was a brainstorming activity. I liked this one because I could easily time box it, it could be done individually and out of it we could gather an actionable list of items. I set a few ground rules (aim for quantity, don't filter, don't judge, be wild and creative), gave everyone ten minutes and told them to write as many ideas about communication as they could. Ten minutes seemed long, but I wanted to give people time to think and write (or type).
At the end of the ten minutes I gathered up all the ideas on a shared spreadsheet so we could look at them and begin filtering. I didn't anticipate how difficult it would be to come up with filters, but the team did a great job coming up with a few such as: provides value to team and is no (or little) work (e.g. simple to implement).
It was difficult to filter our list but in the end after a discussion we came up with four things we could do this week to improve communication: use IM (we're mostly an email shop), look into better co-location of team members, a weekly informal lunch and end-of-day check-outs. After two days, I can say we've implemented two of the four (IM and check-outs) and it has definitely improved communication. This activity took about twenty minutes.
Areas of Improvement
- The brainstorming and filtering activity needed to be better focused. Introduce what we're doing, why we're doing and what we hope to get out of it
- Brainstorming activities need to be focused. I should have said "brainstorm ways we can improve communication". It was implicit, but should have been explicit
Closing the Retrospective
Closing is important. It allows the team to commit to the decisions made, celebrate accomplishments and do a mini-retrospective on the retrospective. That last item was very important for me. I am fortunate to have members on the team candid enough to let me know what can be improved and some of the notes above came out of those comments.
Closing is important. It allows the team to commit to the decisions made, celebrate accomplishments and do a mini-retrospective on the retrospective. That last item was very important for me. I am fortunate to have members on the team candid enough to let me know what can be improved and some of the notes above came out of those comments.
Retrospectives are hard. They are hard to do well and hard work for the participants. For a first go I felt this went very well, but there are obviously areas of improvement to be made. I think practice and feedback will improve the retrospectives as we continue to do them. This applies both to me as a leader and participants. The real value of the retrospective, however, isn't in the meeting itself but the results it achieves. I'm looking forward to the continuous improvement that comes out of this regular meeting.
