Sprint Retrospective + FREE Cheat Sheet

[@Developmentthatpays]

We're back with another Scrum event: the Sprint RETROSPECTIVE. Remember to grab your free Cheat Sheet --> www.developmentthatpays.com/cheatsheets/scrum

[@MarceloLopezJr]

Quick comment...the cheat sheet is missing a key piece.....the Sprint Goal. Something that's mentioned 27 times in the Scrum Guide might be something that ought be on that cheat sheet. Not trying to be snarky, but it's a very commonly missed tidbit in Scrum Framework diagrams. It's something I specialize in as a trainer/coach. If you want to discuss, please reach out.

[@markusoberndorfer4634]

I start the Retro mostly with my Bunny O' Meter. It is a made of a 45° turned square and in the corners there are four pictures of cartoon bunnies that represent happy, sad, confused and angry moods. The developers pin themself somewhere in this square and give some feedback, why they see themselfs there. Sometimes I alter then the rest of the Retro to adapt and cover the current urgent points. I like to end the Retro with a "bath in appreciation". A developer sits on a chair, face to the wall and the others talk about that person only positive and respectfully. After two minutes it turns to the next.

[@Developmentthatpays]

You need to get that trade-marked! You must have built up a lot of trust with your team to address "mood" so directly; impressive 👍

[@kristinjackson1162]

I'm a Scrum Master and like to make our retrospectives really fun. I have used Jack Sparrow (find pictures of pirate Jack Sparrow online and use his various faces to gauge how the sprint went), 4 L's (liked / learned / lacked / longed for), Emojis (use various emojis to gauge how the sprint went), Starfish (make a pie chart divided into 5 parts which looks like a starfish with a section for start, stop, more less, keep), Fast-Furious & Other F's (fast, furious, funny, first time, fed up), Blob Football (coloring a blob person image to depict how the sprint went), DAKI (drop, add, keep, improve), 3 W's (wow, wondering, worried), Car Brands (choosing a specific car brand to depict how the sprint went and then choosing your dream car), Kudos Cards (purchased cards off Amazon where team members can write a note of thanks to each other), Severe Weather (watch, warning, cloudy, sunny, stormy), Traffic Signs (start, continue, stop) and Legos (having team members build something to represent how the sprint went).

[@Developmentthatpays]

Wow - that's an impressive list! Thanks for sharing.

[@dzsinksz]

We used to go into the room and write up the thoughts on Post Its but the team felt we spend a lot of time with the writing up and walking to the board individually. So recently we switched to creating a retrospective page in Confluence at the start of the sprint, then the team can take notes during the sprint in the Start / Stop / Keep format on this page, and in the retrospective meeting we can focus on how to address these items.

[@Developmentthatpays]

Great idea to capture thoughts as they arise during the sprint. I've been in too many Retros where we were sure something important had happened.... but we couldn't quite remember what it was!

[@sokr418]

We usually do the "Work well / Kinda work / Didn't work" model where the team puts sticky notes in each column about what happened in the last 2 weeks. Then, whoever is facilitating ask the team to identify what type of the 7 wastes "Didn't work" items are. This helps identify the action items the team should take because some times with 1 action they can tackle multiple bad items. For each items the team can act on, we find an owner and do a follow up at the beginning of the next retro. When we hit problems that are complex, we would schedule an "Ishikawa diagram" meeting (or extend the current retro) to dig deeper in finding action items the team can own to fix the issue. We finish the retro with a list of wins we had and celebrate them.

[@Developmentthatpays]

Great stuff! For clarity.... The seven wastes - leanmanufacturingtools.org/77/the-seven-wastes-7-mudas/ Ishikawa diagram - whatis.techtarget.com/definition/fishbone-diagram Really like the idea of finishing the meeting on a high.

[@pineconedefense1280]

Great video! I believe Retros are the most important Agile meeting (and a practice that should be taught starting in Kindergarten). We do ours as "What worked, What didn't work, What are we changing?". The one thing we changed is that we have multiple service teams all running Agile and for weekly Retros twice a month will mix people from different teams to share knowledge across teams.

[@PlaybookUX]

Thanks for the cheat sheet. The retrospective is often forgotten because it's the last thing in the long list of scrum ceremonies and after a couple of sprints the team tends to stop doing them. However, they are so important. How can we learn if we don't take a step back and review what we can improve on?

[@JohnPW22]

For some reason i cannot click the consent tick box on the cheat sheet download pop-up? Thanks for all of this! Great info.

[@romilgandhiGandhiRomil]

My team prefers to do the retro with Bubbles method. They feel more comfortable and it's like a game with time limits and grouping with each other and finally work on the priorities and finalizing actions on them.

[@kingskid]

Retrospective meeting is my favorite meeting. I call it nurture, kill and grow meeting

[@ArchimedesTrajano]

I like your columns. We used to use FunRetro's default funretro.io/ which has "What Can We Improve On", "What Went Well", "Action Items". Right now we're using the Azure Devops Retro which is kinda yucky in comparison but at least it is integrated. One thing that FunRetro adds is the notion of voting to see which is the most important for the team so the Scrum Master can prioritize effectively. We try to use FunRetro's voting methodology which is everyone on the team gets X votes (usually 3 to 6 depending on the items and team size) which they can put their vote on. It relieves a bit of drudgery on the retro. However, your columns "Start", "Stop", "Continue" make sense too albeit more abstract, it is simpler and more direct as well.

[@Developmentthatpays]

Hadn't come across FunRetros before - many thanks for sharing. Thanks also for reminding me of "dot voting" (as I call it) . Think that's been a feature of ever retro I've ever been apart of... so I'm rather embarrassed that I didn't include it in the video!