revitalizing your boring retrospectives_3.0final

Revitalize your boring RetrospectivesScrum Retrospectives are a mirror of your sprint

Terri Spencer

Agenda

Scrum Masters Job is to figure out the right retrospective

Diversify your Retrospectives

Mix it up

Priorities & Documents Product Backlog Virtual Wall Product Release

Backlog Grooming –

User Stories & Acceptance Criteria

Product ReleasesPrioritized

Supporting Documents, Requirements & Specs

MajorProduct Release

(8 weeks)Sprint 1

(minor release)

Sprint 2(minor release)



2 weeks

2 weeks

2 weeks

2 weeks

SprintingScrum - Sprint Planning

Estimate Affinity Determine Tasks Assign stories & tasks to team Map stories to Sprints

Daily Stand Ups Development Team Meeting Code Reviews Sprint Demos / Sprint Reviews Story Time Burn Down Charts Sprint

Retrospectives

Deployment Documentation &

Closure

Release Retrospective

Agile Framework - Scrum

Priorities & Documents Product Backlog Virtual Wall Product Release

Backlog Grooming –

User Stories & Acceptance Criteria

Product ReleasesPrioritized

Supporting Documents, Requirements & Specs

MajorProduct Release

(8 weeks)Sprint 1

(minor release)




2 weeks

2 weeks

2 weeks

2 weeks

SprintingScrum - Sprint Planning

Estimate Affinity Determine Tasks Assign stories & tasks to team Map stories to Sprints

Daily Stand Ups Development Team Meeting Code Reviews Sprint Demos / Sprint Review Story Time Burn Down Charts Sprint

Retrospectives

Deployment Documentation &

Closure

Release Retrospective

Agile Framework - Scrum

RETROSPECTIVES

In agile development retrospectives play a very important role in iterative and incremental development. At the end of every iteration a retrospective is held to look for ways to improve the process for the next iteration. They call this the Sprint Retrospective.

The process of doing retrospectives is at the heart of Scrum (Inspect & Adapt), eXtreme Programming (XP) (fix what’s broken), and LEAN Software Development (Kaizen or Continuous Improvements)

Wikipedia, 2014

Purpose of Retrospectives

• Inspect the last Sprint - people, relationships, process, and tools; Improve & Adapt

• Identify what went well and potential improvements;

• Create a plan for implementing improvements - pick one or two items to implement in next sprint

• Vote by dots -• Time-Box session – 2 week

sprints, approx. 60-90 minutes

Why have Retrospectives?

How can we improve the next sprint?

Retrospective Team

• Product Owner• Scrum Master• Scrum Development Team

Only members of the team allowed to attend and participate


General Retrospectives New Team What’s Going On Impediments Innovation Games - Speedboat Innovation Games – Speed Car

I’m the new kid on the block……… Do I know you?

Do we know each other? Is this a new team?

Straws Question Game

• Place straws in a cup and have some marked at the bottom

• Ask pre-prepared questions related to the sprint

• Each team member draws a straw

• Team member that pulled a marked straw must answer the question

Goal: team building - Getting to Know each other

Draw your experience

• Have team members draw a picture of their impression of the sprint

• Display the pictures & discuss

• Capture the good feedback and impediments on post-its

• Have team vote with dots• The one or two impediments with

the most dots will be implemented in the next sprint

Goal: team building for a New Team - Getting to Know each other

What’s Going On?

Retrospective • Put on the walls of the

conference• Placed post-its in the appropriate

category – Want / Have / Keep– Want / Don’t Have / Get– Don’t Want / Have Loose– Don’t Have/Don’t Want/Avoid

• Each member is given three dots to place on any post-it (used for voting)

• Pick the one / two suggestions with the most dots to implement in the next sprint

On the Wall Want / Have / Keep Want / Don’t Have / Get

Don’t Want / Have Loose

Don’t Have/ Don’t Want / Avoid

Innovation Games - Speedboat

• Without speaking – have team write impediments on post-its and place on an anchor

• Group post-its into common themes or subject

• Break team into smaller groups• Give the group of post-its with the common

theme to each small team• Each team collate and integrate all the

post-its into one summary impediment• Vote to determine top priority

Impediments to implement in next sprint

Identify Impediments


Anchor Anchor Anchor

Summarized Impediment



Innovation Games – Speedboat, Part 2

• Have members place the post-its at the anchor level that represents the impediments impacts to the team

• Group post-its into common themes or subject

• Break team into smaller groups• Give the group of post-its with the

common theme to each small team

• Each team collate and integrate all the post-its into one summary impediment

• Vote to determine top priority Impediments to implement in next sprint

Identify Impediments


Anchor Anchor Anchor


Bad

Real

ly

Bad

Dee

ply

Bad



Goo

d

Innovation Games - Speed Car • Team Writes notes • Team Places notes on either

area:• Parachute – What’s been holding us back?• Engine – What’s been helping us move faster?

• Group the notes by a theme• Discuss• Give each member 3 to 4 dots

for voting• Team votes – place dots on

notes• Team picks one or two areas

for improvement

Goal: Increase Velocity – Identify what makes the team move slower and faster

Engine - What’s been helping us move faster?

Parachute-What’s been holding us Back?

Retrospective - Excel SpreadsheetsStart Stop Continue Shout OutsAddressing Architecture - Add record types to the decision tracker and create a different view for architecture decisions

Supporting two / multiple QA environments. Not having processes in place to support both environments in parallel

Using GitLab for our new SVN process

To Michael for sharing the secret stuff and accepting to demo the secret sauce next week

Create architecture documents and put in GitLab

Shareholders - stop allowing them to make requests to the team directly or go outside the scrum process and procedures

Continue doing the Dev Meetings and code reviews

Becki tackling bug fixes without time allocation in a story Going the extra mile.

Making sure both or multiple QA environments are syncedFor stories and support tickets it should be clear the urgency – can it wait until 2.0 or immediately? Add in notes of user story?

Program Manager should keep discussions around the specific user stories allocated only

Continue fine tuning estimating hours and tasks

To Yuri for setting up the environments so quickly within this sprint

Each person please make sure your prior sprint stores / tasks are updated, closed

Hurry up (developers) and wait (program).

Establishing Story Points during Story Time

Not starting or working on stories until the requirements are attached to the story

Stop working on stories that have, no acceptance criteria or clear objective, purpose or supporting attachmentsRepresents the two improvements we will work on next

sprint

Scrum Master – Retrospectives in the Mix

• Get the team back on course• Re-align, Inspect and Adapt • Think about …..What is the

most effective retrospective for this sprint• Address Known Issues• Implement Improvements

Decide the right RetrospectiveWhat is the

right retrospective

for this sprint?

Impediments - Let’s Get Specific

Known Issues Team Dynamics Team Values & Working Agreements Communication Root Cause – Why? What’s Your Story Leveraging Current Events Change Venue

Known IssuesRetrospective on Known Issues • Have a discussion with the team

on known issues• Have everyone recommend

solutions with post-its• Discuss the solution • Vote with dotes – 3 to 5 per

person• Decide which improvements to

implement – pick one or two• Track improvements per sprint

and / or release

Improve Velocity

Definition of Done

Communication

Team Dynamic

s

Build Process

User Stories

Acceptance Criteria

Burn-down Charts

Monitoring Action

Items

Tracking Major

Decisions

Bug Fixes

Code Reviews

Deployment Process

Team Dynamics - Turn Negative into a PositiveRetrospective on Communication and Team Dynamics • Establish Team Values• Working Agreements• Discuss the best ways to

Communicate• Make the event into an

interactive engagement with a list of clear impediments to remove from the team environment

Negative Positive

Team Dynamics -Turn Negative into a PositiveRetrospective – Improve Team Dynamics • Have a discussion on Team Values and /

or Working Agreements • Have team members write what they

want as team values– What provides the best team working

environment? • Have team members write working

agreements?– What will improve the team dynamics?

• Discuss and have team vote on top values and agreements to them

• Give each member 3 or 4 dots to place on any post-it as a vote?

Communication -Turn Negative into a PositiveRetrospective on Communication - Can we Talk? • Create a Focus “On” and Focus “Off” Chart• Have team write down the type of

communication they experienced from team members.

• Go over the Focus “in” and Focus “out” chart

• Team discussion around communication and presents examples from sprint

• Summarize into improvement categories• Place chart in open area so team can

reference it anytime

Team Dynamics and Communication - PositiveRetrospective on Team Dynamics and Communication • End Result:

– Thumbs Up– Team works more effectively together

Root Cause – Why?Use Root Cause Analysis – 5 Why’s • Identify the deeper cause of a issue or

problem • Build a shared team view of the cause

by asking “WHY” 5 times (at least)– Vary the way you ask Why?

• Once you have root cause identified, ask team for action items to stop it

• Don’t stop until you have a root cause

• Implement the action items

• Side note: root cause is usually related to skills, knowledge, leadership, power, authority, communication, collaboration or the way the work is done.

1 2

3 4

5

Cause

Cause

Cause

Cause

Root Cause

What’s your Story? Walk the BoardReconstruct the stories and look for patterns• Pick 4 user stories• Have team recollect the steps they performed to complete the user story• Post any bottlenecks on post-it’s for each story• Look / discuss patterns with the 4 stories• Vote on top impediment(s) to improve in next sprint

User Story reference

Task

s

User Story reference

Task

s

Leveraging Current EventsWorld Cup 2014Theme - Teamwork• Team picks• Observe effective team

work• Recognize poor team

work• Commonalities between

effective soccer teams and the scrum team

• Impediments – team work challenges

Team

Interactive Communicatio

n

“The better team wins. You can have one or two special or key players but, if you play like a team , you are stronger than two or three players”Jermaine Jones, soccer player, USA team at the World Cup 2014

Change the VenueGet out of the officeTheme - Teamwork• Take post-its and pens• Have team write what we should

start, stop, continue doing and Shout-outs recognizing team members

• Place post-its on the table• Vote to determine top

impediments• Leverage the new venue in the

discussion

DevCon 2014HP’s first global Agile Development Conference

June 2014, Palo Alto, CA

DevCon 2014 Conference - LLLL

Retrospective from ConferenceDaily input from attendees• Put posters on the walls• Placed post-its in the

appropriate category on the appropriate poster– Learned – blue– Lacked – yellow– Liked – green– Loved - pink

On the Wall

Goal: Get feedback on Conference

Action: Leverage feedback for next conference – integrate what we loved, learned and liked – address what is lacking

DevCon 2014 Conference - LLLL

Interactive Real Time feedback• Charts posted on wall in open space• Post-its and Pens provided• Charts posted during the entire

conference - 3 days

HP Global Agile Conference - June 2014

Goal: Interactive, constant feedback

Action: Participants engaged and involved, helping to determine next conference

Retrospective for Meetings and Presentations• Placed dots and poster

near exit door• 3 dots provided to

Attendees • Placed one dot for each category• Content• Delivery• Value

Capture Feedback for any session or meeting

Medium

High

High High

Low

Content: How informative was the information?

Value / applicability:

How useful was the

information to you?

Delivery / Presentation: How was the delivery as a

whole?

Car Build

ROTI – Return on Time InvestedVote by Dots• Content

– Was it interesting to you?

• Value– Did it add value?

• Delivery – Was it presented in

an effective way?

Retrospective Feedback from each session

Goal: Scrum for hardware Action: Improved velocity with every team – implemented retrospective feedback from prior teams

Feedback Team

Scrum Team

Release Retrospectives

Peaks and ValleysRetrospective • On the bottom of the chart or

white board , draw a horizontal line representing your release timeline

• Place faces vertically to present the happiness gradient – ranging from happy faces to sad faces

• Have each person draw their happiness timeline on how they were feeling during the product release cycle

• Have each person explain their experience while drawing their line

Ja n Fe b

Inception

M ar A pr

Delivery

Peaks and Valleys, Next StepRetrospective • Have people place areas of

improvements on the time line that shows sad face

• Group common items together and find common themes

• Rate level of importance the themes or vote on a theme

• Use the top items for areas of improvement to implement

Ja n Fe b

Inception

M ar A pr

Delivery

1. Definition of done

2. Code Reviews3. Builds deployed

Tuesday & Thursday’s

4. ………..5. ………..

1

2

3

List of Improvements

Assess the sprintsRelease Retrospective • Place post-its in each sprint

– Place key post-its reflecting memorable experiences in each sprint during the release cycle

• Group common items together and find common themes

• Rate level of importance of the themes or vote on a theme

• Summarize the good and improvements that surfaced throughout the sprits of this release

• Summarize what to keep and action items for the next release

• Devise Plan of action

Sprint 1

Sprint 3

Sprint 4

Sprint 5

Sprint 2

Sprint 6

Common / Summarized Improvements across sprints

Product Release Cycle 1

InteractionCurrent Events

Change VenueInnovation

Games

Change Con-tent

MediaThe Team

Open communication , every member of the teamUse Post-its, dots, stickersToysCharades

Liked, Learned, Lacked, LovedWhat should we ..Start, stop, continue do-ing & shout outsMeasure low, medium high supportVarious Feedback loopsKnown Issues

SpeedboatSpeed CarDraw your Reflection

YouTubeOnline VideosWebsitesBlogsMovies

Park or recreation facilityNearest watering holeRestaurantBowling Alley

Retrospectives – Mix it Up

• Sports• Innovation Announcements• Global Issues & Ideas• Workshops & Training• Architecture• Paradigm shifts

Summary Scrum Masters Job is to

figure out the right retrospective

Diversify your Retrospectives

Thank you