Upload
rachel-davies
View
950
Download
1
Embed Size (px)
DESCRIPTION
Every sprint the team gets together to reflect on what they learned and work out how to improve. How can you encourage your team to use this time together to implement changes? Come to this talk to get some tips on how to facilitate an effective retrospective and pitfalls to avoid.
Citation preview
Team-driven Improvement with Retrospectives
@rachelcdavies @unrulymedia
Agile CoacH
ABOUT YOU
Enjoy working in a team? Enjoyed working in a team?
Team-driven!
Frustrations Sometimes teamwork is difficult ..
Sustainable pace?
“Retrospective?”
• Looking back over a lifetime of work?
“Retrospective?”
Pioneered by Norman Kerth. “a ritual held at the end of a project to learn from the experience and to plan changes for the next effort.”
Book: Project Retrospec:ves
explains techniques for 3 day off-‐site mee:ngs at the end of a project to iden:fy lessons learned.
Project Retrospectives
A meeting where a team looks back on a past period of work so that they can learn from their experience and apply this learning to future work.
Retrospectives
Project Timeline
Mining The Time Line for Gold
Use flip-chart to categorize experience • What has worked well? • What have we learned? • What to do differently? • What is still puzzling? • What needs further work?
“A discussion of what went right and what went wrong in the Sprint, and what can be done to improve the next Sprint.” 2004
Cut-down list of questions • What went well? • What didn’t go well? • Actions
Typical Scrum Retrospective
Risk: team judge past events rather than thinking how to react next time around!
Disconnected Cycle?
PO
SM
£££
Agile Retrospective Cycle
From “Agile Retrospectives” by Derby & Larsen
Pitfalls
No time to improve!
Living in the past
Spend too much on looking back, no time to discuss future changes.
Unconnected Ideas
Individuals have ideas for improvement but don’t connect them to team action.
Cloudy Thinking
If team is not clear on what to do then nothing happens
Thinking too big!
Be realistic! How much can you really do next sprint?
No owner
When no one on team champions a change, it gets forgotten
Always the Same Owner
Scrum Master takes on actions for the team rather than supporting team to do actions themselves.
Invisible Actions
Actions from retrospective not visible to team or outside.
Activities that trivialise
Picking on people
Maintain safety
Tips
Meetings require pre-work and follow up!
Hard to learn about creating effective retrospective by being a participant
Care for People
• Make a safe space • Diffuse tension • Bring food and
drinks
Slow Down!
• People will not talk if you do not listen to them
• Invite everyone to share what happened
• Take time to gather the whole story
• Involve each member of the team
• Forget about making lists of what went well, etc.
• Break down into improvement goal and action steps small enough to fit into sprint cycle
• Prioritise along with other work
• Review in Scrum meetings
Apply Scrum planning
Experiment! • Retrospectives are
about learning from experience
• Experiment and adapt the format to generate new insights
Drop the Timebox? • Try running your
retrospective without a timebox.
• If there’s not much to talk about finish early
• If there’s a lot to talk about it keep going (with plenty of breaks)
Get Outside • Get out of the office • Go to the park or the
pub • Lifts pressure and
generates energy
• Remember to take notes and photos
Rotate the Facilitator
CONTINUOUS TIMELINE
DISTRIBUTED TEAM
Is there an elephant in the room?
Acknowledge the current state
QUADRANTS
SUPERPOWERS
BOATS
THINKING HATS
WORKING In SMALL GROUPS
SEISMOGRAPH
GRADIENTS
DOT VOTING
DIALOG SHEETS
FUTURESPECTIVE
Be patient
Change Takes Time
WE Are HIRING
Thank you!
www.slideshare.net/RachelDavies/
References • Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Reviews by Norman L. Kerth
• Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby & Diana Larsen
• The Retrospective Handbook by Patrick Kua
• Collaboration Explained by Jean Tabaka
• Agile Coaching by Rachel Davies & Liz Sedley • Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making by Sam Kaner • Innovation Games by Luke Hohmann
• http://facstaff.unca.edu/manns/retropatterns.html
• http://www.retrospectives.com
• http://www.retrospectivefacilitatorgathering.org/
• http://xp123.com/xplor/xp0509/index.shtml