Doing effective and fun retrospectives

Transcript

1. Martin W. Kirst, 09/2015
2. Retrospective (from Latin retrospectare, "look back") generally means to take a look back at events that already have taken place. As a noun, retrospective has speci fi c meanings in medicine, software development, popular culture and the arts. […]
3. FEEDBACK LOOP
4. becoming an effective team in small iterative steps Photo by Ömer Haktan Bulut on Unsplash
5. Trust Honesty Respect
6. “Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.” “Project Retrospectives” - Norman Kerth Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
7. What happens in a retrospective … … stays in the retrospective. This is a rule to help creating a safety environment. Keep in mind to share the learnings/outcome of the retrospective. Photo by Grant Cai on Unsplash
8. 1. set the stage 2. gather data 3. generate insights 4. decide what to do 5. close the retrospective Photo by Thomas Bormans on Unsplash
9. Agenda Estimate time, which every step requires and make it visible. Name the sessions explicitly to the method you’ve chosen.
10. 1) Set the stage Example: Tell your right neighbour, why you think he/she is super…
11. 2) Gather data Example: collect dates, events, fact if your retrospective period is longer than 2 weeks, let the team create a time line
12. 2) Gather data Example: in your last sprint, image you sit in a boat … 
 What speeds you up? What slows you down? 1st everyone write its own cards, than present the notes to the team. Try to fi nd overlapping topics. Choose the most important ones.
14. 3) Generate insights Example: root cause and consequences analysis fi ts the best, if you want to work on problems (e.g. things your boat slowed down ;) )
15. 4) Decide what to do Keep in mind: limit the amount of actions you/others commit to, fi nd people who feel responsible for a task and assign a due date
16. 5) Close the retrospective
17. MODERATOR I highly recommend engaging a moderator. So the complete team is able to focus on the retrospective itself. Maybe you want to develop your soft skills and put a training in your PDR? Photo by Adrià Crehuet Cano on Unsplash
18. QUESTIONS? Photo by Artem Maltsev on Unsplash
19. SPECIAL SITUATIONS Some retrospective don’t go as planned. Than its up to the moderator to handle escalated situations or heated debates. Such problems need to be solved fi rst. 
 Most often it helps to re fl ect the situation back to the team, e.g. describing (not arguing) from the moderators point of view. 
 The team should commit on the solution to solve the special situation. This comprehensive topic is worth of discussing separately.
20. REMOTE RETROSPECTIVES • Prefer to do face2face retrospectives • For remote ones use at least a video/webcam to look into others eyes • As a replacement for moderator cards use 
 e.g. Google Docs/Presentation or draw.io • When using Zoom, it helps when everyone is able to do drawings and others can see that • Everyone should see changes in realtime and being able follow the discussion
21. RETROSPECTIVE H a v e F u n ! Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash