Sameer Bendre, a colleague of mine at OutSystems, introduced me to the following approach. Now, as promised, let's move to the template that you can use to make your next meeting a booming success. These questions will guide your sprint retrospective agenda and help your team decide on the actions to improve the next sprint. Sprint Retrospective Questionsĭuring the Sprint Retrospective, your team should discuss four main questions: Sprint Retrospective Ideas: Tips for an Effective Meetingīefore I share the template I use in my scrum retrospectives, I'd like to introduce the questions that are the foundation of its structure.
#Agile retrospective ideas free#
Therefore, it's now time to throw your retrospective word document template away and break free from the barriers of boring retrospective analysis strategies. At the end of a Retrospective, everyone involved should decide on the action items that should be taken to improve future sprints. But they are also great to identify what puzzles people, what they want to improve, and what has become a risk to the project scope, timeline, or budget. These sessions are indeed a great opportunity to appreciate everyone's contribution to the project. Through my experience as an Engagement Manager at OutSystems, I've discovered that many agile leaders, including myself, in the beginning, don't understand the true value of Sprint Retrospectives. But, is it? The Value of a Sprint Retrospective Especially with bigger projects where sometimes we find ourselves in the tenth sprint and have no idea of what to say in the next retro meeting. I do get their point though: analyzing past events can get repetitive sometimes, leading to a lack of creative ideas and dulled critical thinking for areas of improvement. It's just a session to tap people on the back to increase their egos on how awesome they've been!" "That's boring as hell! It doesn't add value to the team, and it takes at least one hour of the time that my developers could use to program. In fact, I've seen leaders decide not to do Sprint Retrospectives at all due to the time it takes away from app development. Other times, the team lacks the motivation to fully express the way they truly feel about how the project is coming along. Sometimes teams get bored when they don't see changes or actions being taken based on past retrospectives. However, when it's time to schedule a Retrospective meeting, project managers and development teams are hesitant, especially if they're already a few sprints ahead. A well done agile retrospective boils down to great benefits, including a more self-organized team, better collaboration, faster velocity, and happier end-users. They are the primary "indicators" of the success of the project delivery.
#Agile retrospective ideas how to#
It's imperative that we learn how to listen to them. Sprint Retrospectives are a golden opportunity for your team to express themselves. Therefore, the question now is: how can you successfully implement Sprint Retrospectives in your projects while making these sessions a powerful and enlightening experience? Challenges Ahead of a Sprint Retrospective It's simply because they know how tedious they can be if not led with creativity and energy from the project or engagement manager. And that's not because they don't know the benefits these sessions provide. However, putting the theory aside, I know by experience that Sprint Retrospective meetings tend to be avoided by the Scrum team. Now, The Scrum Guide is definitely the best and most complete guide you will ever need to learn Scrum the right way.