Sprint Retrospective

Sprint Retrospective, Scrum Retrospective ceremony, Agile Retrospective meeting, team Sprint retro agenda, Sprint Retrospective templates

Sprint Retrospective is an inspect and adapt internal team event held at the end of the Sprint, timeboxed to one hour and a half for a 2 weeks sprint, in which the entire Scrum Team focuses on the team itself and on the process instead of focusing on the product, uses various methods to identify how they are working together, what went well, what did not work well, what the team can do better to improve future collaboration and creates an improvement plan for the next sprint.

During the Sprint Retrospective meeting, all participants reflect on the past sprint, have an equal voice, focus on process improvement, review the team norms and ways of working, vote for the identified issues, group similar ideas, identify root causes, prioritize actions, improve the work process, review the Definition of Done and identify what to start doing, stop doing or keep doing for better productivity in the next sprint.

Sprint Retrospective benefits

A Sprint Retrospective meeting provides an opportunity for everyone in the team to voice their opinions, not just for the most extroverted team member who are comfortable to speak up anytime during the process. The Scrum Retrospective ceremony offers an equal voice for all the team members, making sure that also the normally silent and introverted team members provide their insights and improvement ideas.

The Sprint Retrospective meeting is the Scrum event where the team steps back from getting work done and collectively inspects how the work gets done. Retrospective surfaces the challenges that the team is facing, the tension that might be slowly building in the team and provides the context for the team to address those and improve how the way they will work.

By using Sprint Retrospectives, the Scrum team evaluates the collaboration, which helps the team to identify areas for improvement and improvement actions to take and guides the team to improve the process and the output in an incremental and continuous way.

Sprint Retrospective agenda

  • Set the stage – set the tone and direction for the retrospective
  • Gather data – create a shared memory, highlight pertinent information and events
  • Generate insights – think creatively, look for patterns, themes and connections
  • Decide what to do – generate and prioritize valuable, clear actions
  • Close the Retrospective – summarize and end the meeting

Sprint Retrospective is integrated in the iterative product development cycle – the Scrum team incorporates improvements, builds the product, delivers increments and repeats the process. Each Sprint Retrospective should be held at the end of each Scrum Sprint and the entire Scrum Team must participate.

During the Sprint Retrospective, the Scrum team focuses first on what went well during the sprint, by focusing on the team itself rather than on the work performed and shares examples of success and great collaboration performed inside and outside the team. Then the Scrum Team discusses about what did not work well, focusing on things that the team can change and is in their control to do so. Lastly the Scrum team identifies what can be improved and focuses on creating improvement actions that will be performed during the next Sprint. At the next Sprint Retrospective, the team is reviewing how the improvement changes were handled during the sprint and decides how to act for the future.

Questions for team retro meeting

  • What went well during this Sprint?
  • What didn’t go well during this Sprint?
  • What improvement ideas do we have for next Sprint?
  • How will we implement these improvement actions?

Sprint Retrospective templates

  • Good Bad Start Stop – went good, went bad, start doing, stop doing
  • DAKI – Drop, Add, Keep, Improve – practices to remove, to add, to continue doing, to improve
  • Keep Add Less More – doing well already, idea or experiment, to do less of, to do more of
  • Start Stop Continue – things that the team should start doing, that are not working, that are working
  • 4Ls – Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for
  • FLAP – Future considerations, Lessons learned, Achievements, Problems
  • Mad Sad Glad – from an emotional point of view, what made team members feel frustrated, disappointed or happy
  • Sailboat – What is the wind pushing our sails that make us go fast, What anchors are holding us back, What rocks are ahead of us that risk our future, What is our ideal island destination
  • Starfish – Keep Doing, Less Of, More of, Start Doing, Stop Doing
  • Three little pigs – House of Straws – things that could easily fall apart, House of Sticks – things that are working but could be improved, House of Bricks – things that are strong and stable

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