How To Do Sprint Retrospectives Easy #1

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Retrospective time again?

Yes, things go fast around here, 2 weeks have passed and the sprint is done. Time to have the same problems put on the table and move on. Why should it be different this time?

Get the feedback

Yes, this simple. Usually feedback is noted down by the team members on stickies in various apps or in excel. You could have the same thing over and over again. This time do something different: Add an Anonymous Survey.

If it’s a problem, don’t just ask what the problem is, also mention what could be a solution? Is there something realistic that we can do to solve it?

Fetch the data and showcase it to the team. Remove the nasty bits if there are any and leave them for the secret meetings.

You could have something like this:

Retrospective Feedback	Type	Situation	Solution
George	Continue Doing	I like that we have lunch together and we can chat freely of what is going on without management overhearing us	N/A
Elaine	Start Doing	Lunches need to start having soup as a first dish	Just order the soup of the day
Kramer	Start Doing	We need to take turns in playing for the food	Pick a random order and just do it
George	Continue Doing	Ordering desert after we finish eating	N/A
Newton	Stop doing	Ordering desert after we finish eating	I want to leave early
Yev	Continue Doing	Everyone behave when ordering soup	N/A
Yev	Stop Doing	Disrespecting the rules of the soup shop	No rule, no order
Jerry	Start Doing	We need some direction, everyone is doing what they want, my things don’t get delivered	Have people telling us what we need to do and not wait

Yes, you can add names, be careful that if they match with your team members it could be confusing.

Meet

So this is not your average retrospective. People know what they wrote, they don’t know what others wrote. The juicy stuff will appear.

First rule: not mentioning who wrote it even if it’s obvious

Second rule: Look at what can be done, not at what was done and why can’t it work

Third (hidden) rule: Grab some pizza or similar. Hungry people are grumpy. 

Start by organising your time:

Top items solutions brainstorm

You have your top items that you want to take action on. Take them one at a time. It could take time, so if it’s too much, break and meet again.

Put down the actions no matter how improbable they are, you don’t get to filter them now. Just add the details there

Break

Breaks are good, people think about things, they get to talk and come up with creative ways of dealing with things. Breaks are good.

This was all for today, please let us know if you enjoyed this article and if there are other items you would like to know more about.

More (Part 2)