1. Retrospective
Søren Weiss
in a Kanban team
Agile Coach
An example
Twitter: @sorenweiss
2012, September 12th
2. Background
• The presentation serves to share an agenda which can be used
to facilitate a retrospective in a scrum team or in a kanban team.
• I facilitated the retrospective with a Danish kanban team (9 team
members) in September 2012.
• The team had implemented Kanban in June 2012.
• The team members were working in a maintenance/project
organisation and were all highly skilled specialists.
• Duration of the session was 1 hour.
3. Retrospective agenda
• Set the scene
• Commitment exercise
• "Actions for Retrospective" game
• Chose the retrospective
4. Set the scene
• I shared with the team my
experiences on what makes a
good retrospective meeting by
presenting 5 essentiel elements
1. Time
2. Focus
3. Reflection
4. Responsibility
5. Variation
5. 5 elements for the good retrospective
1. Time, invest sufficient time for the meeting. I often see that too little time is invested in a
retrospective meeting. This typically leads to teams that jump to conclusion and actions of poor
quality.
2. Focus, set optimal conditions for the meeting. I often see team doing retrospective meetings in their
teamroom with phones ringing, collegues dropping by and other interruptions.
3. Reflection, be aware that the retrospective is a space for reflection. I often see that teammembers
misunderstand to be only a social event rather than a "working meeting" with focus on reflection. It
takes brain power to reflect efficiently - and that should not be forgot.
4. Responsibility, the participants of the retrospective are the ones generating the insights and
drawing, drawing the conclusions and setting new goals. This takes a team with teammembers
feeling responsible for they own participation and also for the participation of the whole team. I
sometimes meet teammembers who think that "the other teammembers" will do the job.
5. Varation, it is crucial for the success of the retrospective that the format of the meeting varies over
time. I sometimes meet teams, who have become less motivated to do retrospectives, because
there are no surprises in the way the meeting is conducted and facilitated.
6. Commitment exercise
The team members form a circle. One person reaches out with one arm and tells the
other teammembers what he/she will contribute with during the retrospective. Everybody
makes eye contact and nods to appreciate this. Then another person reaches out placing
a hand on the first hand and shares what he/she will contribute with. This continues untill
everybody has committed to contribute with something for the meeting. Often the team
ends the exercise by yelling out "go" or some other "battle cry". This typically results in a
strong feeling of commitment for the individuals as well as for the whole team. I consider
this exercise a "quality assurance" element for the meeting.
7.
8. "Actions for Retrospective" game
The retrospective was set for only 60 minutes. As a facilitator I needed to
combine the stages of the retrospective in order to comply with time. I
choose to use the "Actions for Retrospective" game. One advantage of that
exercise is that "Gather data", "Generate insights" and "Draw conclusions"
are done within the same exercise.
1. The team formed into two groups reflecting on
1. Puzzles, questions for which they have no answer.
2. Risks, future pitfalls that can endanger the project.
3. Appreciations, what they liked during the previous iteration.
4. Wishes, ideas of the ideal project (not improvements!)
2. Because of the time limit I stressed that each group could only bring one
item per category. The two groups presented their input by placing post
it notes on the matrix. During this part of the session I strongly
emphasised that the other teammembers took notes which would serve
as input for the later "Draw conclusions" phase.
3. After presenting all items the team decided on the most important action. "Actions for Retrospective" game based on Nick Ostvoegel's
I assisted the team in securing that the action was S.M.A.R.T. "Actions centered"
Furthermore a "guardian angel" was appointed for the action.
4. The team managed to decide on two actions for the next iteration.
