As I continually strive for continuous improvement, retrospectives are one of the most powerful tools I have learned from Scrum. At the end of every sprint, the team gathers and discusses how the sprint went with regards to people, processes, and problems and then brainstorms how to move forward and solve what is identified as the most impactful change. When I first started, the retros felt very awkward because they are so different than any meeting that I had been in before but I quickly saw the value in having the chance to evaluate how the work is going and fix problems quickly. These are some of the most successful retrospectives that I have used.
- Reverse Retrospective
Instructions For this retrospective, the acting scrum master went around and just asked each person what they wanted to talk about. Everyone can pick whatever they want, whether it was something that went well or could have gone better, but they have to pick the single most important topic they want to discuss. During the… - Goodbye Retrospective
One of the founding members of our team was leaving and I wanted to find a way to both honor his time and commitment to the team but also try to reduce some of the fear and anxiety we all felt with his departure. For this activity, we had all the members of the extended… - Back to the Future-spective
This future-spective was an exercise where we imagined that we had achieved our goals and then made a plan to ensure that we meet the goals we set for ourselves. The sprint review before we starting a partnership with a third-party, I was hoping to run a different kind of exercise to align on our… - Harry Potter Retrospective
I came up with this retro to focus on what went well and highlight what we learned after one of the most frustrating sprints that I have ever been apart of. During the sprint, we had issues integrating code from a third-party, a critical bug was discovered, and the business priorities were changed all within…