Getting Started

About the Agile Retrospective

As part of the Agile Events, the Agile Retrospective concludes the last period of development time and its purpose is to plan ways to increase quality and effectiveness. An Agile Team inspects how the last development period went with regards to individuals, interactions, processes, tools, and their Definition of Done. 

 

In general, the purpose of the Agile Retrospectives is to find the answers by the Team for the following 3 questions about the last development period:

·      What went well?

·      What problems were encountered?

·      What should be committed to improve in the next period?

 

A Retrospective meeting session usually lasts a maximum of three hours for a one- month development period, but an average meeting lasts for an hour.

 

Participants of a typical meeting are the development team, the Scrum Master of the team and the Product Owner. However, people from outside the team can be invited to participate as well if a specific topic is discussed that includes / affects them.

 

During each Agile Retrospective the Agile Team plans ways to increase product quality by improving work processes or adapting the definition of “Done” if appropriate and not in conflict with product or organisational standards - according to http://scrum.org . The outputs of a Agile Retrospective are those identified improvements by the Development Team, which could be implemented in the next development periods.

 

 

What does a typical Agile Retrospective look like?

(According to Esther Derby and Diana Larsen (Agile Retrospectives – Making Good teams great. External source: https://pragprog.com/titles/dlret/agile-retrospectives/ )

 

  1. Set the stage

    1. Set the goal

    2. Give people time to “arrive” and get into the right mood

  2. Gather data

    1. Help everyone remember

    2. Create a shared pool of information (everybody sees the world differently)

  3. Generate insight

    1. Why did things happen the way they did?

    2. Identify patterns

    3. See the big picture

  4. Decide what to do

    1. Pick a few issues to work on and create concrete action plans of how you’ll address them

  5. Close the retrospective

    1. Clarify follow-up

    2. Appreciations

    3. Clear end

    4. How could the retrospectives improve?

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