Agilex retrospectives

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1 Learning from Experience with Retrospectives Rachel Davies [email protected] What is a Retrospective? 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 projects

Transcript of Agilex retrospectives

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Learning from Experiencewith Retrospectives

Rachel Davies [email protected]

What is a Retrospective?

A meeting where a team looks back ona past period of work so that they canlearn from their experience and applythis learning to future projects

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Why Retrospectives?

“Without retrospectives you will findthat the team keeps making thesame mistakes over and overagain.”Henrik Kniberg

Scrum & XP from the Trenches

• Same is true for ineffectiveretrospectives!

Raise your hand if ..

• You have been in a retrospective?

• You have facilitated a retrospective?

• You’ve been in a retrospective that had

made a difference to your team?

• You’ve been in a retrospective that had

no positive impact?

*

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Agile Retrospectives Timeline

2001

Retrospectives in XP teams

2009200620042003

RetrospectivesFacilitatorGathering

ScrumGathering

CSM

EstherDerby /ScrumAlliance

OOPSLAworkshop

In Scrum Lifecycle

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Challenge with Heartbeat Retros

• Short time to getactions done,hooked into sprintcycle with unclearpriorities

• No professional“neutral” facilitator

• Following poorretrospectiveprocess

Sharing Some Stats

How long are your retrospectives ?

How often are your retrospectives ?

How many actions do you generate ?

How many actions get done ?

*

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Work in pairs to write down aninitial retrospective design

Warning! We’ll be “refactoring” your design so expectsome critique of initial ideas with the aim of improving

the design

Round 1*

Meetings require pre-workand follow up!

Hard to learn about creating effective retrospective bybeing a participant

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Swap your pair, now ..

Add in checklists:• for preparation beforemeeting

• follow up after meeting

Round 2*

Retrospective Smells

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No time to improve!

Living in the past

Looking back into the past,no time to discuss future.

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Judging

Went well? Do different?

Cloudy Thinking

Not clear on what to do, nothing happens

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Fixing Symptoms

No root-cause analysis

Blaming

Criticizing others, not taking responsibility for solution

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Unconnected Ideas

Team comes up with many ideas.Lack of buy-in from team members.

Thinking too big!

Be realistic! How much can you really do?

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No owner

When no one on team champions a change, it gets forgotten

Always the Same Owner

ScrumMaster takes on actions for the team.

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Invisible Actions

Actions from retrospective not visible to team or Product Owner.

Activities that trivialize

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Picking on people

Maintain safety

Have you experienced any ofthese retrospective “smells”?

Any more to add?

*

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Back to original pair

Anything you want to change about your design?

Round 3*

Anatomy of Retrospectives

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Bridge between Sprints

Sprint x Sprint x+1

What happened? What to change?

Balancing Conversation

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Structure Flow of Conversation

From “Agile Coaching” book

and improved teamworking agreements

Incomplete Actions

Before creating any newactions, see if oldactions are Done.

Take time to understandwhy actions are notfinished.

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Slow Down!

• People will not talk if you donot listen to them

• Invite everyone to share whathappened

• Take time to gather the wholestory

• Involve each member of theteam

• Forget about making lists ofwhat went well, etc.

Gather Data in a Timeline• To remember what happened

• To integrate different perspectives on events

• To find an area to work on

• Not to categorize and keep as a record

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Create a Gallery

Ask team members to draw their own picture ofwhat it felt like working on the last sprint

If pictures are too weird use a templatehttp://www.thekua.com/atwork/2008/04/

Agree a Focus

• Focus in on an issuethat’s causing themost pain to theteam

• Voting can help butbeware ofdisagreementswithin the team

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Make Time for Ideas

Encourage ideas fromyour team

Consider more than onesolution!

Action Plans

What steps will be taken in our nextsprint towards solving the problem?

Who will check up to make sure theaction is implemented?

Make actions visible during Sprint:– Allow time in plan– Put on team board– Remember in daily standup meeting

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Apply Agile Planning Techniques

• Break down into tasks smallenough to fit in iteration cycle• Prioritise along with other work,understand velocity ( or level ofservice for process improvement)based on value• Track and review progress same asagile work

Experiment with your Retrospectives!

• Retrospectives areabout learning fromexperience

• Experiment and adaptthe format togenerate new insights

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Swap your pair

Apply “Half & Half” refactoring

Any further adjustments?

Round 4*

Continuous Improvement

Do you have experiences to shareabout how to make reflection a more

integrated part of your daily work?

What ideas do you have for newthings teams can try towardsContinuous Improvement?

*

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Feedback?

Info:Twitter: @rachelcdaviesBlog: http://agilecoach.typepad.com/

References

• Project Retrospectives: ���A Handbook for Team Reviews by Norman L. Kerth.

ISBN 0-932633-44-7

• Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby & Diana

Larsen. ISBN 0-9776166-4-9

• Collaboration Explained by Jean Tabaka. ISBN 0-321-26877-6

• Agile Coaching by Rachel Davies & Liz Sedley. ISBN 978-1-93435-643-2

• http://www.retrospectives.com

• http://retrospectiveswiki.org/

• http://www.retrospectivefacilitatorgathering.org/

• http://xp123.com/xplor/xp0509/index.shtml

• http://architects.dzone.com/sites/all/files/DZoneSDCOACH.pdf