Dummies guide to retrospectives

Adaptations of James Shore's awesome book on retrospectives

The truth

Way to go, little buddy. I knew you had it in you. - Metro man

Why?!

Ask James. - James

We continually improve our work habits. No process is perfect. Your team is unique, as are the situations you encounter, and they change all the time. You must continually update your process to match your changing situations. Retrospectives are a great tool for doing so.

The retrospective serves two purposes: sharing ideas gives the team a chance to grow closer, and coming up with a specific solution gives the team a chance to improve.

The world of dante

Image: http://www.jamesshore.com/Agile-Book/retrospectives.html

Schedule

Let's break the bread into 3 unequal parts

Pre-Retro

1. Game of Darts.
2. Book a venue and ready retro infrastructure.
3. Notify the attendees.

Retro

1. Norm Kerth's Prime Directive (1 minute)
2. Timeline (10 minutes)
3. Brainstorming (5 minutes)
4. Mute Mapping (5 minutes)
5. Voting and Grouping (5 minutes)
6. Retrospective objective (15 minutes)

Post-Retro

1. ‘Cardify’ action items.
2. Add it to the scrum board
3. Track the retro items twice every week.

Pre-Retro

Step 1: Game of Darts

Time: Morning, just after usual team standup.

All team members assemble near dart board. Skip this step if any of the team member volunteers to be the ‘Retro Man’ (non geeks click here).

If none turns up, we need to select one. The name of each member is listed on the board. Each of them throws the dart and respective scores are noted. The lowest scorer is the ‘Retro Man’. In case of tie, repeat until the tie is broken, or flip a coin.

Step 2: Book a venue and ready retro infrastructure.

Retro Man has to select and book a retro venue. Retro venue should be equipped with following infrastructure.

1. Stickys
2. Pens/Sharpies
3. White Board
4. Proper lighting.
5. A laptop/computer (nice to have).
6. Something to sit on (optional)

Step 3: Notify the attendees

Send an event invite to all the attendees through slack or email or set a calendar invite if possible. The event description should include time and venue.

Retro

Step 1: The Prime directive (1 min)

a.k.a Norm Kerth's Prime Directive

Retro Man reads the following to the team members.

"Regardless of what we discover today, 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."

If all the participants understand and agree to the prime directive, they should say "I agree"

Step 2: Timeline (10 mins)

Why?!

Stimulate memories of what happened during the increment of work.

If everyone agrees to the Prime directive, hand out stickys and pens.

Group members write cards to represent memorable, personally meaningful, or otherwise significant events during the iteration, release, or project and then post them in (roughly) chronological order. The retrospective leader supports the team to discuss the events to understand facts and feelings during the iteration, release, or project.

Steps

1. Set timer for 10 mins. You could use http://www.timer-tab.com.

2. Ask people to think back over the iteration/release/project and remember all the memorable, personally meaningful, or significant events and write them down, one per card or sticky note.

3. Remind the group that the point is to see many perspectives—so they don’t arrive at a consensus of what was memorable, meaningful, or significant. If it was any of those to one person, that’s enough.

4. Monitor the level of activity as people start talking about events and writing cards. If people haven’t started writing cards after half the time has elapsed, remind them to start writing.

5. When the groups have a stack of cards, invite people to start posting them

6. When all the cards are posted, invite the team to walk by the timeline and see what others have posted. It’s OK for people to add new cards at this point as they remember more events.

Step 3: Brainstorm (5 mins)

Hand out Stickys and sketch pens/sharpies to the participants. Draw a tabe on the board with 6 equal columns. Write the following headings on the whiteboard:

• Enjoyable
• Frustrating
• Puzzling
• Same
• Need More
• Need Less

Set timer for 5 minutes. http://www.timer-tab.com.

In the stickys, each participant has to write down atleast one incident that come under the aforementioned classification. The notes should be short and sweet.

An online version of a retro white board can be used http://funretro.github.io/distributed/

Guidelines:

• Strive for quantity. Best ideas rarely come first.
• Offer all ideas, nothing is silly.
• Be outrageous, wild, humorous, creative.
• No judging, evaluating or criticizing. Filtering comes later.
• Be lucid.

Step 4: Mute mapping (5 mins)

Mute mapping is a variant of affinity mapping in which no one speaks. It's a great way to categorize a lot of ideas quickly. You need plenty of space for this. Set timer for 5 minutes (http://www.timer-tab.com). Invite everyone to stand up, go over to the whiteboard, and slide cards around.

There are three rules:

1. Put related cards close together.
2. Put unrelated cards far apart.
3. No talking.

Step 5: Voting and Grouping (5 mins)

Why?!

We need to identify the top two to three root causes to work on starting in the next iteration. We can’t absorb a long list of changes; we need to work on the things that will make the biggest difference. Circle each group and label them with common idea in the group.

Steps:

1. Start from one end ask what that person to vote on one sticky.
2. Tally mark inside against each category.
3. Repeat 1 until end of people.

Finally, after you have circled and named all the categories, vote on which categories to improve during the next iteration. Voting shall be done by drawing tally marks against each group. Participants can put all their votes on one category if they wish, or spread their votes amongst several categories.

Step 6: Retrospective objective (10 mins)

After the voting ends, one category should be the clear winner. If not, don't spend too much time on it; flip a coin or something. Discard the cards from the other categories. If someone wants to take a card to work on individually, that's fine, but not necessary. Remember, you'll do another retrospective next week. Important issues will recur.

Identify the action items for the retro.

Post-Retro:

Step 1: ‘Cardify’ all action items. Retro man has to write down each action item along with name of item owner and tentative date in a card.

Step 2: Add it to the scrum board

Step 3: Track the retro items twice every week. The retro action cards has to be read during the morning stand up and track the progress.

Reference:

http://www.jamesshore.com/Agile-Book/retrospectives.html

http://agile.2ia.net/Agile%20Retrospectives.pdf

http://www.funretrospectives.com/category/retrospective/

https://github.com/funretro/distributed/blob/master/README.md