Retrospective is a planed time, usually a meting or workshop where the team can start to reflect over the work that´s been done the last period. Retrospective is where the team can analyse, examine and look for improvements in their work process and also a great way to learn from each other.
In Scrum method every sprint should end with a team retrospective to find not only what can be improved to next iteration but also what the team have done well and should keep doing.
The whole team should participate at the retrospective and also preferably even others like, team lead, Scrum master and product owner.
An retrospective should be regularly and not to long between the sessions. Because it´s easy to forget whats been done. So have at least one retrospective every month. The length of the retrospective differs from team to team so find the right length for your team.
Retrospective by Esther Derby
Doing great retrospective over a long time is hard and often they turn out to be boring, time consuming and no results is coming out of it. Esther Derby have set the standard for doing good or even great retrospective. She gives you at least 5 steps as framework to do successful retrospectives.
- Set the stage
- Gather data
- Generate insight
- Decide what to do
- Close the retrospective
Remember, retrospective is hard but one of the most important methods if you want self managing team to improve buy them self. So don´t skip this technique.
Read more:
- Agile Retrospectives – Esther Derby
- Wiki
- Sprint Retrospective
- Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great
Thanks to Jimmy Janlén for letting me use his pictures from Agile Topics Cards.
