Help Card - Sprint Retrospective
The retrospective is a meeting that we hold at the end of each sprint. It’s primarily for the delivery team although the product owner is welcome to join.
The purpose of the meeting is to discuss how well the team performed during the sprint and to identify ways to improve. This is not about individuals, it’s a team effort. If there are any chinks in the armour then it’s down to the team to identify those and agree a way to fix or improve them.
Who’s Involved
This is a mandatory meeting for the delivery team but it’s good to include the delivery manager and the product owner.
Delivery Team Each member of the team will discuss what went well and what didn’t go so well.
Delivery Manager Runs the meeting. Also takes the opportunity to identify what went well and not so well.
Product Owner Mostly a spectator but welcome to ask questions. Might be able to help the sprints run more efficiently in future.
Before the Meeting
It’s important to be ready. In the actual meeting we’ll need to compare our performance and look at actions from the previous retrospective.
Gather Stats
How many story points did the team burn during this sprint?
How did that compare to the estimate?
How did the number of points compare to previous sprints?
What were the actions from the previous retrospective? What has been done to progress them?
What are the outputs from the Sprint Review meeting that may need to be explored in a retrospective.
Create Form
Create a retrospective form for this sprint and save in the project folder.
Artefacts
There is only one artefacts that the sprint retrospective will produce or update:
Retrospective Summary
A document describing the discussion and a record of the actions.
Agenda
Previous Actions
Describe the actions captured in the previous retrospective and ask each owner to describe what’s happened since they were implemented.
Was the change positive?
Should it continue?
Does the change need more time to be assessed?
Current Sprint
Consider the experiences from the sprint and ask questions to motivate discussion:
Did this feel like a good sprint?
Did this feel like a bad sprint?
Is there room to improve?
Are there any lessons we can learn from?
Do we have the right tools?
Do we have the right processes?
Is our quality management good enough?
Did you receive the right level of support?
How was your workload? Too much? Just right?
Are you lacking any skills or experience?
Add the responses into the columns in the retrospective document:
Things we done well in this sprint
Weak areas
Discuss and agree actions to maintain the strengths and to addresses and weaknesses.
Alternative Approaches
It’s good to mix up the retrospective, particularly on longer-term projects. Simply asking the same questions in a different way can help people’s thinking.
Good, Bad, Stop, Start What was good, what was bad, what do we need to stop doing, what do we need to start doing?
Went Well, Could’ve Gone Better, Surprises, Lessons What went particularly well, what not so well, what cropped up that you weren’t expecting or didn’t plan for, what lessons did you learn?
Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed For What were the highlights, what do you know now that you didn’t at the outset, what was missing, what will you make sure to start the next sprint with?
Facts, Feelings, Findings, Future Start by going through the facts of what happened during the sprint - achievements, problems, solutions, events etc. Then discuss feelings about those facts. Then look at what conclusions we can find in these facts and feelings (eg ‘Acceptance criteria aren’t descriptive enough). Then plan future actions to improve things.
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