Agilex retrospectives
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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