This is the second post in our Scrum Assessment Series. A continuous improvement culture is the most important thing for a team to establish early.
Where does the team land on the scale below?
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Team does not care about performance
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Team is aware of performance
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Team discusses issues
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Team identifies improvements
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Team takes responsibility for improvements
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Team is allowed slack to make improvements
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Team benefits from improvements
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Team continually seeks improvements
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Improvements are recognized and appreciated by organization
Facilitating effective retrospectives on a frequent cadence is key. We highly recommend the book "Agile Retrospectives" by Esther Derby and Diana Larson to learn good techniques when facilitating your retrospectives.
The Basics:
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Did the whole team attend? Including the Scrum Master and Product Owner?
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Are no managers are present? No stakeholders? (This is a good thing!)
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Is there one after every sprint?
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Is it timeboxed to roughly 1 hour for every sprint week?
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Did the team discuss the facts from the Sprint? Burndown? Release Progress? Key Metrics?
Good:
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Are Retrospective action items tracked during the next Sprint for progress?
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Do Retrospectives really lead to improvement?
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Does everyone on the team engage in discussion?
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Were the top issues discussed to reach the root cause?
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Were 1-3 actionable goals set as the top priority?
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Did the team discuss how they were going to ensure a change happens?
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Did the team focus their time on what they can do better?
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Did the team have open and honest communication?
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Were everyone's ideas listened to?
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Were real issues discussed?
Awesome:
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Do Product Owners and managers allow team slack to deliver improvements?
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Does the team demonstrate the desire to continuously improve?
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Does the team demonstrate the courage to try something radical?
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Do changes lead to significant improvements?
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Was there healthy conflict?
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Were good things discussed? Did the team share appreciations?
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Did the session foster shared team ownership?
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Did the team demonstrate courage in their ideas for improvement?
Ideas for Improvement:
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Mix it up. Try something new. Don't let the format stagnate the discussion.
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Start with appreciations to foster a culture of respect and trust.
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Encourage the team to be courageous in their ideas.
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Leverage Deep Democracy techniques to get everyone involved.
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Define Team Agreements on how the team is going to handle conflict in a healthy way.
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Don't just focus on process items, spend time on building team chemistry.
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Start retrospectives with a Prime Directive if ensuring positive thinking and reducing blaming is needed.
View other posts in our Scrum Assessment Series.
Please share some ways you have improved your Retrospectives.
Get a more serious look at how well your teams are learning from their experiments, with our Agile assessment tool.
