May book review: Agile Retrospectives

This month, we continue the theme of team self-reflection and retrospectives started last year with my review of "Project Retrospectives" by Norman Kerth.

Esther Derby, Diana Larsen
Agile Retrospectives. Making Good Teams Great.

This book is an excellent addition to Norman Kerth's guide to project retrospectives. Esther and Diana focus on iteration and release retrospectives which are short and frequent. As such, they provide feedback faster and allow the team to find and fix issues before it is too late for the project. Iteration retrospectives are repetitive, seemingly easier to organize and facilitate, and may not even require a formal facilitator.

However, like any other routine executed over and over again, they could sometimes get tiring and even boring. What steps could we take to keep the discussion flow fresh and the team engaged? How could we help the team members apply their creative and unconventional thinking?

Esther and Diana outlined a five-step approach to leading retrospectives. For each step, they offered practical advice and a set of activities and techniques to make retrospectives insightful and fun:

1. Set the Stage

2. Gather Data

3. Generate Insights

4. Decide What to Do

5. Close Retrospective

  • Checkin
  • Focus On / Focus Off
  • Explorer / Shopper / Vacationer / Prisoner
  • Working Agreements
  • Temperature Reading
  • Satisfaction Histogram
  • Timeline
  • Triple Nickels
  • Color Code Dots
  • Mad Sad Glad
  • Locate Strengths
  • Satisfaction Histogram
  • Team Radar
  • Like to Like
  • Brainstorming / Filtering
  • Force Field Analysis
  • Five Whys
  • Fishbone
  • Patterns and Shifts
  • Prioritize with Dots
  • Report Out and Synthesis
  • Identify Themes
  • Learning Matrix
  • Planning Game
  • SMART Goals
  • Circle of Questions
  • Short Subjects
  • Triple Nickels
  • Force Field Analysis
  • +/Delta
  • Appreciations
  • Temperature Reading
  • Helped, Hindered, Hypothesis
  • Return on Time Invested
  • Satisfaction Histogram
  • Team Radar
  • Learning Matrix
  • Short Subjects

Retrospectives equipped with these activities will become a powerful iterative improvement tool for your team.

Note that I think of iteration, release, and project retrospectives as iterative rather than continuous improvement tools. They will help your team reflect, learn, adapt, and get better together, eventually reaching the performing stage of  Bruce Tuckman's Team Development Model. Performing teams are recommended to implement a continuous improvement tool, such as A3.

Esther's and Diana's book is easy to read, concise, and well organized. If you are doing iterative development, it is likely to serve you as a reference guide for many iterations to come.

To take a closer look at this and other Esther Derby's books, click here. Happy reading!

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