Retrospective , Scrum, Agile,

SYSTEMS+
RETROSPECTIVE
ASHEESH VASHISHT
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Why are you here?
What are you looking for?
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LIFE IS FULL OF EXPERIENCE AND
LEARNING
Any one who has gone through a tough time in
life?
What was it? What was impact on you or your
team ( may be family, relatives, friend)
How did it come out of it? What was the impact?
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SO WHAT IS RETROSPECTIVE
A Meeting?
Event?
Finding poor
performer.
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Blame Game….

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WHAT ?
What is retrospective?
Looking back on or dealing with past events or situations.
Examples of real life lessons learnt….
Retrospective in real life?
An Agile Retrospective is a meeting that ́s held at the end of an iteration in
Agile Development. At regular intervals the team reflects on how to become
effective, and then tunes and adjusts the behaviour accordingly.
Retrospective in software
What is retrospective in Waterfall method?
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IT IS ……
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Important &
Regular Time slot
Team Ritual Reflect on How
to become
efficient
Issues are discussed
without blame or
accusation
Critic is done on the
working output and
not on the people Teams try to arrange new ways of working to avoid default thinking patterns
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RETROSPECTIVE : WHY?
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Why do we do Retrospective?
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RETROSPECTIVE : WHY?
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Lets play a game….
Clap , Snap, Stomp
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RETROSPECTIVE : THE BUSINESS VALUE
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 Place where the team feels safe and
comfortable.
 Allowing them to talk freely about their
frustrations.
 People have an “official” window of
time within which they need to be
listened to
 Human being loves (and needs) to be
listened to.
 An essential place where the team
gets together and gets excited as
they find new ways and new
possibilities for tackling old problems.
 Perfect place to have some fun and
relax a bit whilst you are working
 Run our Retrospectives in a bar
Team Energizer
Used for people to let go of their
frustrations
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 Biggest problems that we as human
beings have is that we do not
frequently stop to reflect
 In order to learn, we must stop and
reflect on what has happened
 Retrospectives as a team building activity.
 Bring harmony back to the team
 When working as a team things get rough
and it’s difficult to set them back on track
As a team
building
artefact
Right place to learn & help the
team/company to improve
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 Have a positive influence on the
value that is delivered to our
customers
 Teams will get better over time, and
as an outcome of this, they will figure
out the most efficient way to deliver the
best value to their customers.
 Ritual that enables teams to create a
continuous improvement culture,
where they reflect on past experiences
and define future actions
 This could be expanded to different
levels of the organisation
Create continuous improvement
increase customer value
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 It can be used to allow the team to
understand the role that was played by the
person who left the team and how they can
substitute their loss. Or, in the case of a new
team member, they can stop and analyse
how the new person that arrived on the
team is impacting the team setup and
understand how they can utilise his new
knowledge in benefit of the team.
As a place to honour
or grieve past events
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 Start or end a Retrospectives with a
round of appreciations
 Running Appreciation exercises is a
fantastic way to raise positivity within
the team
 One of the nicest things about
Retrospectives is the chance that they
give teams to own their own
decisions.
 In turn creating a fantastic feeling of
empowerment.
Place to raise positivity
within the team
Serve to empower teams
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RETROSPECTIVE : NEED?
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What is need do Retrospective?
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PRE-REQUIREMENTS OF SUCCESSFUL AGILE
RETROSPECTIVES
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Norman L. Kerth book “Project Retrospectives” say five important ideas that should be
present, in order to have a successful retrospective:
1. The need for the ritual
2. Naming the process
3. Prime directive for a retrospective
4. The darker side of the Retrospectives
5. The Retrospective Facilitator
 Rituals are important because:
 They serve to bring people together
 Allowing them to focus on what is
important
 To acknowledge significant events or
accomplishments.
The need for ritual
Why do we celebrate Holi , Diwali, Xmas, EID?
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RETROSPECTIVES
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 It is important to name the process in a clear
way so as to have everyone’s understanding.
“Retrospective” is a simple and self-explanatory
word.
 Norman tells us that before starting a retrospective, we
should communicate a prime directive:
“Regardless of what we discover, we must understand and
truly believe that everyone does the best job he or she
could, given what was known at the time, his or her skills
and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at
hand.”
Naming the process
Prime directive for a retrospective
 How do you call some one whose name you do not know?
 How do you feel when some one calls you be a name?
“Baby”, “Shona”….
 What happens when you take up and activity
whose main goal or Aim is not known to you?
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RETROSPECTIVES
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 One technique that can be used is to request that people
express themselves in the form of “wishes”, rather than
accusations.
 This changes the tone, creating a “safe” environment, and as
it was explained above, having a safe environment is one of
the most important things for a successful retrospective.
“The darker side of retrospectives
 What happens in the PMD Discussion? Lets Do a role play.. One Minute…
 What happens in a feedback session or lessons learnt?
 Complaint Session:
 When it is not well facilitated
 Understand the reason person complains
 People do not do this with bad intentions
 They have needs which are not fulfilled and they need to
symbolize their emotions
 Lets say using “Wishes”?
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RETROSPECTIVES
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The retrospective facilitator What happens in discussion when you do not have a
facilitator?
 Good Facilitator:
 Experience, training, and a lot of self-reflection is
required
 Should have a clear idea about what he or she wants
to get out of that session.
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HOW TO CREATE SAFE ENVIRONMENT TO RUN AGILE
RETROSPECTIVES
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Location of the Retrospective is a Key Element
Keep the Agile Retrospective for the team not for
management.
Team members decide what information will go
public
Proper feedback training
Encourage but not force participation
Design the Team Alliance
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ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF RETROSPECTIVE
FACILITATOR
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 No decision maker
 Create the right environment where everyone is comfortable to speak.
 Encouraging people to speak up, and making sure that everyone is
heard.
 Clarify Insights
 Challenging Insights with lots of questions
 Think positive
 Be able to summarise everything that happened during the Agile
Retrospective
 Develop yourself as a Professional Facilitator
 Do not take sides in the discussion
 Be able to choose different exercises for different situations
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RETROSPECTIVE : NEED?
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How do we do Retrospective?
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RETROSPECTIVE : HOW?
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2 Wives in office
I had a fine
evening, how was
yours?
It was horrible. He
came home , had
dinner and went to
sleep.
Oh mine was amazing ! My husband came
home and took me out for a romantic dinner.
After dinner we walked for an hour. When we
came home he lit the candles around the
house. It was like a fairy tale !
It was horrible. I came home & when I got home, there's no
dinner, they cut the electricity because I forgot to pay the
bill; so I took her out for dinner which was so expensive
that didn't have money left for a cab or auto. We walked
home which took e I remembered there was no electricity
so I had to light candles all over the house
Great. I came home,
dinner was on the table, I
ate & fell asleep. What
about you?
How was your evening?
Their husbands

5 STAGES OF AGILE RETROSPECTIVE
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Esther Derby and Diana Larsen, in their book “Agile Retrospectives”, explained to us that
there are five different phases during an Agile Retrospective.
Set the Stage
Gather Data
Generate Ideas
Decide what to do
Closing
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SUCCESS CRITERIA : RETROSPECTIVE
ACTION POINTS
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 Small Changes, One thing at a time
 RCA in Retrospective
 How to make sure Changes happen
One of the biggest problem with Agile retrospective is to follow up on the action
items. People feel frustrated and topics are selected during retrospective and are not
solved in iterations/Sprint.
 Ambassador Technique (Energy Ambassador)
 Add Retrospective topics to top of the Sprint Backlog
 Start Daily by asking for Agile retrospective topics
 Kanban Board for Agile retrospective topics
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RETROSPECTIVE GAMES: SET THE STAGE
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Set the stage
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How:
 “If you think about this sprint as a car brand, which car would you choose?”
 Reveal your car. “Do not Discuss”
 Ask people about their dream car
 What would you change from last sprint to have their dream car
 Group the ideas into common group
 Use Dot votes and pick up most critical problem for next sprint
 Choose a situation
 2 Minutes – Car Brand
 Dream Car Brand – What will take you there
 Dot Votes
When: It can be used as an opener for any retrospective. Good exercise to reveal
individuals´ opinions- allowing everyone to have a common understanding about what
the others think. This is important because team members must be aligned.
Car Brand
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 Choose a situation you want to change – Slightly more difficult..
 Circle and Universe
 Last situation and the shape
 What do you feel about it
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How:
 Start by welcoming team members and setting an affirmative goal for the session
 Make an open space
 Put an object on the floor and explain to all that this is centre of universe
 Explain to them that you will read some statements, and while you are reading the
statements, you would like them to move closer to or farther away from the “Universe”,
depending on how true the statement is for them.
 To benefit fully from this exercise, you could ask the team at the end: “Where were you
surprised with the shape?”
Constellation
Why: Great exercise for people who do not like, or do not feel comfortable, sharing their
opinions/feelings openly- at least in the beginning of the project when they still do not trust
everyone completely. Due to the cultural backgrounds or the personality of team members,
answering certain questions can be difficult for some. But this exercise can help, because people do
not need to speak in order to answer questions. Another advantage is the fact that this exercise
reveals what all of the team thinks about certain topics, without the need for early discussions.
When: It can be used as an opener for any retrospective. However it might be most suitable for
situations where the Scrum Master/Agile Coach feels that the team members do not all have the
same opinion about the practices applied within the team. This is a good exercise for revealing
individuals´ opinion and allowing everyone to have a common understanding about what the others
think. This is important because team members must be aligned.
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Why: The check-in helps to focus the attention of those in attendance; it gives them a
window in which to transition away from whatever they were thinking about prior to
the retrospective, and to express what they hope to get out of the retrospective.
Check In
How:
 Check-ins begin with a greeting to welcome people to the retrospective, following
which the goals and agenda are reviewed
 After this, the retrospective leader will usually ask a short question and have
everyone in the group take turns in answering it.
 In a word, tell me what would you like to get out of this session.
 Coming into this retrospective , what kind of flavour/animal/car you are
When: It’s best to think about your question carefully ahead of time, and to choose
one that you think will best access the thoughts and feelings of those in attendance.
For example, if the team has recently experienced some kind of conflict or stressful
upheaval, it may be wise to list off a handful of words describing certain emotions (e.g.
happy, worried, angry, etc.) and let each team member pick one to describe how he or
she feels. This creates a “no fault” way of venting strong emotions about the situation
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RETROSPECTIVE GAMES: GATHER DATA
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Gather Data
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The X-Y Axis with Days and Happiness Index on Board
Lets analyse one situation.
Analyse
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How:
 Can be done in small teams or individually
 Divide a paper into X and Y axis. X axis has number of days and Y has Happiness
 Let every one depict the happiness index.
 Consolidate and help them identify events that should be repeated and events that cause
delay in the team.
Happiness Index
Why: The purpose of this exercise is to draw a graph representation of team members´
emotions during sprints, connecting their emotions to sprint events. With this kind of information,
the team can identify what exactly affects its performance during the sprint.
When: This technique is quite simple and does not require any special occasion. However, it might
be most suitable for situations when a team has many different emotions within the sprint and
they wish to analyse the consequences, or when the team has several challenges within the sprint
and would like to understand better how and when the issues appeared. The Happiness Index
technique is suitable for any team: it does not require any specific level of maturity.
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Why: The purpose of this exercise is to analyse how teams are performing in different areas and
identify possible improvements to be taken in near future. The assessment areas are:
 Product Ownership Health: How product owner is performing
 Sprint Health: How activities between the sprint are being managed
 Team Health: How healthy is the team spirit with in the team
 Technical Health: How well the team has implemented technical best practice
Team Assessment
When: This technique is most suitable for situations when team wants to better understand how
well they are implementing agile. This exercise may not solve a specific problem that occurred
during the sprint, but might reveal some of the causes of why those problem emerged
How:
 Take an excel sheet and divide it into above 4 categories
 For each different areas, create several questions
 Product Ownership Health :
 PO facilitates user stories development, prioritization and negotiation
 PO collaborates proactively with Product manager and Stakeholders
 Sprint Health :
 Team plans the sprint collaboratively, effectively and efficiently
 Team always has clear sprint goals and commits to meeting them
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 Team Health :
 Team members are self
organized , respect each other,
help each other complete the
sprint goals, manage inter-
dependencies and stay in sync
with one another
 Stories are iterated through
the spring with multiple
define-build-test cycles
 Technical Health :
 Automated acceptance test
and unit test are part of
DoD.
 Refactoring is always
underway
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Why: Although this exercise is often associated with manufacturing, it can be used in IT. It is lean
manufacturing technique used to analyse and design the flow of material and information required to
bring product or service to a customer.
Value Stream Mapping
How:
 This exercise may not necessary be done during retrospective but can be done anytime.
 Draw x-Axis and Y-Axis. X-Axis represents days in iteration, Y represents stories.
 Now draw a line below y axis if the story does not bring value to customer. If it does bring
value draw line above Y axis.
 Waste, as Poppendiecks describes in their book “Lean Software Development” is:
 Anything that does not create value for a customer
 A part that is sitting around waiting to be used
 Making something that is not immediately needed
 Motion
 Transportation
 Waiting
 Any extra processing steps
 Defects
When: This technique is most suitable for matured teams. It will reveal how team and systems
interact.
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RETROSPECTIVE GAMES: GENERATE INSIGHTS
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 Draw a Sail Boat – Show wind flow, under water and the sail.
 One thing which you want to change
 Every one should put it in the correct place.
 Analyse
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How:
 Select a topic that needs to be tackled during next sprint.
 Draw a pyramid and come up with forces for change and
forces against change
 Ask every one to rate these forces
 Consolidate the ratings for both “for” and “Against” ratings
 Scenario 1: if the forces against the change is too
strong, pick up new topic and drop this for now
 Scenario 2: Balance between the two forces: facilitate
team to help come up with action which will convert the
forces against to forces for.
 Scenario 3: Forces for change are strong, then team has
necessary confirmation to proceed.
Force Field Analysis
Why: This technique involves looking at all forces for and against a decision. In simple words
weighing pros and cons. This is a great tool to analyse the amount of buy-in that we have for a
specific change that we wish to implement in a team or organization.
When: It can be used when there are several different opinions about a change that needs to be
made within next sprint. If team identifies a possible change for the next sprint but there are
several different opinions about the feasibility, this technique can help.
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Force Field Analysis
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How:
 Each cause identified by asking why is questioned further to find out why in turn that cause
emerged, until the lowest, root causes are found.
 Usually it takes four to seven levels of causes and effects to either reach a situation where
nobody knows the answer, or to determine a stopping place where people feel that there is
no need to dive deeper. At this point, you have determined a root cause!
 Repeat this until you have identified root causes for all higher-level causes that have been
identified
 There are some things to be aware of when using this exercise:
 Use real problems, not just imaginary cases. Ask team members to bring up
issues/errors/problems that actually happened, not merely something that could have
happened (this prevents assumptions).
 Know that there are always multiple causes for a problem. Don’t stop when you have
a first root cause
 Root causes almost always have to do with people. It’s rarely a technical or tool
related problem.
Five Times Why
Why: A ‘five times why’ exercise helps to define effective actions that will inhibit recurring
problems, and prevent similar undesirable outcomes in the future.
When: When teams have repeating issues in their iterations and the retrospectives seem to be
incapable of solving them, this exercise helps everyone
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Why: The starfish exercise is an evolution of the typical three questions that are used for
retrospectives:
 Stop – These are activities that do not bring value to a team, or customer activities that
bring waste into the process.
 Less – These are activities that require a high level of effort yet produce little benefit. They
may also be activities that were brought into the team from the past but did not lead to any
overall improvements to a process.
 Keep – Usually these are good activities or practices that team members want to keep.
These activities are already being applied.
 More – Activities that a team should focus more on and perform more often. For example,
many teams tell me how pair programming is helpful, yet they feel they do not need to do
it every time.
 Start – Activities or ideas that a team wants to bring into the game. With this exercise,
teams can get an overall picture of what’s going on within the team, what is working and
what is not. They can get an overview about failed as well as successful ones in the past.
 any specific level of maturity.
Star Fish
When: I believe this simple technique does not require any special occasion. It might be especially
interesting for situations when a team goes through several ups and downs during the iteration.
This technique reveals good actions as well as less positive observations as to how the team has
performed, and therefore might be a good tool for summarizing the iteration. Starfish is suitable for
any team. It does not require any specific level of maturity.
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How:
 First draw a picture, One of the beauties of this exercise is the fact that a team need not be
together in one location. You can use tools like Lino, for example, to apply the exercise to
geographically spread out teams.
 After drawing the picture on a flip chart, it’s good to start a brainstorming session by
allowing the team to dump their ideas in the Stop area. After that, give two to three minutes
to each person to read aloud the Stop ideas and following that spend 10 minutes on a
short group discussion to see if everyone is aligned.
 Repeat the exercise for each of Less, Keep, and More. For the Start element/unit/item add
one extra step. Use the Toyota approach, choosing a single topic to discuss. You can hold
a vote to see what the team considers to be the most important topic to start with. After
selecting the topic, design a small strategy to make sure a topic is well implemented.
 This strategy might include responsible persons, due dates, and, most importantly,
success criteria. In order to know if the implementation was successful, we must have a
success criterion. A theme that is chosen in the Start element/unit/item does not need to be
new to a team. It can be an improvement of something that is not working well. The order
of topics within the circle is important.
Star Fish
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Pick up the issues identified in earlier technique
List down as a championship start up list
Do the Dot voting
Continue till winner
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Why: This technique will help you and the team to select the most important topic that should be
tackled during the next iteration. It’s important to pick up the most important topic and understand
what the root causes are of the problem. This technique will help you to pick the topic with the
highest priority.
Championship Game
When: Sometimes you have several topics and need to pit them against each other before
deciding which topic should be tackled during the next sprint; in this case you have a group of
topics and you don’t know which group to do first. With this in mind, single elimination is a useful
top-down approach to choosing.
How:
 Identify the real issues ( makes sure you have
done a five why technique)
 As football tournament place each issue against
each other
 Do the basic dot voting to identify the winner
 The winners are going to move towards the final.
 Do a proper root cause analysis: do not fall into the
trap of not understanding what the real issue is.
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Why: “Prioritize with dots” allows the team leaders to assess how the group wishes to prioritize
information (such as ideas, proposals, long lists of candidate changes, and other important issues).
Priorities with Dots
How:
 First, you’ll need to make it clear to those in attendance that you need to prioritize certain items;
to do this, you should ask the group what they see as being the top priorities out of all the
information/issues presented
 Give each team member coloured sticky dots (either ten dots or a number of dots roughly equal
to ¾ – ½ the total number of items), review the items that are under consideration, and provide a
legend which states:
 A #1 priority item receives four dots;
 A #2 priority item receives three dots;
 A #3 priority item receives two dots;
 A #4 priority item receives one dot.
 Give people a few minutes to properly think about their choices—this shouldn’t be rushed
 Count the dots assigned to each item and write down the totals.
 Verify that the group wants to proceed with whichever items top the list. If four or more items tie
for first place, ask the group why they see those items as priorities and try to get them to decide
on a clearer winner, then revote (use different coloured dots if possible). If need be, you can
offer fewer dots, so that people must pick more carefully.
When: You have list of issues identified and do not know which one to take up in the next sprint.
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Create a half circle and keep one chair in front.
Every one be seated
Need one Volunteer
We need to have a environment of respect,
authenticity and profound listening
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How:
 Create a half circle with chairs. Let the members sit on the chairs.
 Other half circle will have only one chair called, “Central Chair”
 Communicate to all that we want to have an environment of respect, authenticity, and profound
listening.
 Ask one person to Volunteer for central chair.,
 Other members of the circle Volunteers and takes turn to day what they liked about the central
person
 Format : “You really served the group when […], and when […]” (keep it to a minimum of 2
appreciation statements). Follow this with, “What I would like to see more of [….]” ( keep it to 1
statement).
 Once few members have done, summarize and ask other person to take central chair.
Appreciation Exercise To Close Your Retrospective
Why: The idea behind executing this exercise is very simple: the exercise will increase the positivity
of a team. The use of appreciations is something that is done by dozens of teams all over the world.
Studies demonstrated over and over that positivity in teams leads to high performance, and of
course creates a great environment inside of the team.
When: Anytime. 5 minutes before or end of meeting
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When: The great thing about this exercise is that we do not even need to figure out when is a good
time to perform it. This exercise can be done whenever the team wants.
Kudo Cards in Agile Retrospectives
Why: In our society, it is quite common to reward people with money for good behaviour; I believe
this is quite wrong, and I believe there are other and better ways to reward great behaviour. Jurgen
Appelo, for example, says: “There are many wrong ways to reward employees. A simple but
effective approach is the use of kudo cards, which enables people to give each other small tokens
of appreciation.” Through the use of this exercise, you can expect team members to feel
appreciated by one another..
How:
 Do I have to explain this…
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How:
To do this exercise the only thing you need is a Flipchart, post-its for each team member, and
markers. Draw a graph with two axes on the Flipchart.
Axis X: Value, Axis Y: Fun
Split the graph into 4 different parts:
Boring/No Value
Boring/Great Value
A Lot of Fun/No Value
A Lot of Fun/Great Value
After drawing the graph on the Flipchart simply ask your team members to decide where they would
like to put their vote. Give them a couple of minutes to think about it. When they are done, ask them
to write their reason on a post-it- why did they choose that quadrant?
Return of Time Invested
Why: This exercise allows you to get qualitative and quantitative feedback in your sessions. There
are several exercises out there that are used to rate the quality of products or services. Usually
these methods are quantitative, meaning that you have a scale and you choose a number within
that scale.
When: whenever you want to close your Agile Retrospective and you are interested in getting
feedback from your participants. One of the biggest advantages of this exercise is that people do
not need to speak; this is especially beneficial with teams of introverted people.
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RETROSPECTIVE ANTI PATTERNS
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Solution
WHAT HAPPENS IN RETRO, DOES NOT STAY IN RETRO
 The management expected that if the retrospectives were recorded, other teams
would be able to learn by observing the problems of their peers.
 Nobody cared, nobody was open to speak about their problem
 The Agile Retrospective should be a safe place.
 Only team members should participate in the meeting
 To tackle the issue of sharing learning from Retrospectives, action items can be
displayed in public places, however I would keep detailed notes just within the team.
 If the organisation is serious about knowledge sharing, they can support communities
of practice. It is a much better approach to knowledge sharing than forcing people to
share the outcomes of Retrospectives with the rest of the organisation.
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 The team commits to an ambitious list of actions without considering whether
it has time to get them done in the next iteration.
CHANGE THE WORLD
Solution
 This leads to disappointment because the actions do not get done and the
team continues to add more actions to the list in every retrospective.
This anti-pattern is quite common.
Making small changes and changing one thing at a time is the secret.
The right thing to do is to simply address one topic out from your retrospectives at a
time. Select a topic, but perform a proper analysis of it.
Thoroughly understand what the root cause is of the problem at hand (you can use
techniques such as the “5 Whys”) and implement the change during the next iteration. If
you follow this approach you will allow the team to focus on one thing at a time.
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 The team takes five to ten minutes after their iteration demo to have a quick chat
about how things have been going, and calls that a retrospective.
NO TIME TO IMPROVE
 If you are the coach, take the time to explain to the team how important the agile
retrospective is.
 This is a sign that the team sees no benefit to retrospectives. If individuals do have
ideas for improvement, they face a struggle to implement them in the absence of a
forum for enlisting the support of the team.
 If individuals do have ideas for improvement, they face a struggle to implement them
in the absence of a forum for enlisting the support of the team.
 But remember to stick to what I mentioned in the previous antipattern: change one
thing at a time.
 Coach the team to choose one single topic, understand the problem, and implement
it. Let the team see the improvement and use this momentum to reinforce the idea of
how important the agile retrospectives are.
Solution
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 The team spends the retrospective grumbling about how bad things are without taking
responsibility for improving the situation.
NO RESPONSIBILITY IS TAKEN
Solution
 This may be cathartic and release tension in the team, but can easily turn into a
blame game.
 Retrospectives are about making changes for the better, and that cannot happen
without a discussion of what the team can do.
 Transfer the responsibility to the team.
 Let them speak, but at some point ask a simple question: “What are you going to do about the
situation?” This is usually a very powerful question. It sends a clear message to the team: if they
do not do anything, then nothing will change.
 Be imaginative, and help the team to find their own ways to solve the problem; but do not allow
the retrospective to become a complaint session.
 They will be trapped in their daily frustration and crappy environment.
 Usually they wake up and try to define some actions to correct the problem, but many teams
end up saying: “We cannot do anything, it´s out of our control.”. Do not fall into this trap! There is
always something the team can do in order to improve the situation.
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 Arrange action items in a way that they can be determined as ‘done’ or ‘not
done’. ‘Refactor more’ is not a helpful task because one cannot simply
identify whether it has been completed or not. ‘Improve the User Model’s
Code Climate grade from an F to a D’ is actionable, and therefore the team
should take small steps that are achievable and contribute towards
improvement.
WISHFUL THINKING
 Actions discussed are rather vague and with no appointed owners, so for
example, “improve communication” or, “do more refactoring”. These are not
actions; they are problems to work on. Without more discussion, the team
does not really know what to do to implement these ‘pseudo actions’.
Solution
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Solution
LINE MANAGERS WANT TO ATTEND
 Sometimes line managers want to attend retrospectives to understand what´s going
on. They do it with the best intentions; they just want to know what the problems are
in order to help teams solve them. Unfortunately, this is not a great idea. As
mentioned earlier, agile retrospectives are a place where team members must feel
safe. This is a pre-requirement for productive retrospectives. If line managers attend
the meeting, people will be afraid of speaking out.
 The solution here is quite easy. All Scrum Masters can get together and create a rule
that no one else, other than team members, can attend the retrospectives. If
management really wants to know what´s going on in retrospectives, the Scrum
Master can mention topics that will be tackled during the next sprint, but that´s it. All
confidential information should remain within the team.
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 Each retrospective should start with the team reviewing the past action items. The
Scrum Master should guide the team and check if the previous items have been
carried out. Each team should come up with Success Criteria to attach to each
improvement topic that emerges from each retrospective. If teams use something like
this, it is very easy to check in during the next Agile Retrospective if the item was able
to solve the problem.
NO REVIEW OF PAST ACTION ITEMS
 A common mistake is when teams do not check if what they decided to implement did
actually improve their situation. Teams define topics for improvement for the next
sprint, but very few teams actually stop and analyse whether their actions actually
resulted in some improvement.
Solution
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Retrospective , Scrum, Agile,

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