Introduction
One of the main principles of agile ways of working is to inspect and adapt. The iterative and incremental development brings in the benefit of continuously improving the product along with people and process. While at the end of every iteration, product increments with features, there is also another ceremony which is recommended to ensure there is improvement with respect to people and process. Sprint retrospective is one forum where the teams get together to reflect on how their experience was in the previous sprint and how they can make it better in the upcoming sprint.
In our experience as an agile consulting company, we have seen many teams misuse or not make full use of retrospective meetings and the main reason is the inability to understand the intent behind the ceremony and making it just as a checklist meeting. This could cause a lot of fatigue in the team and eventually reach a point where retro becomes just a meeting. So, in this blog we aim at exploring and understanding:
- What is a Sprint retrospective?
- The purpose and intent behind the Sprint Retrospective event.
- How to drive a sprint retrospective meeting?
- How can sprint retrospective help agile teams?
So Let’s Start!!!
What is a sprint retrospective?
A sprint retrospective is a recurring meeting held on the last day of the sprint to reflect on the past sprint and identify what could be improved. It is one of the four ceremonies which are recommended by the scrum guide. While there are thousands of templates to facilitate a retrospective meeting, the intent however remains the same and that is to understand the positives in the past sprint, areas of improvement and get consensus regarding the action items to improve. A sprint retrospective is:
- Held on the last day after the sprint review
- Timeboxed for 1 hour for a 2 week sprint
- Scrum master facilitates it and development teams participate in it
- Output is actionable items which will help teams improve in terms of process and people
Where retrospectives fit within the Agile and Scrum framework?
The main fitment of sprint retrospective is around the cycles of inspection and adaptation along with continuous improvement which is one of the core principles of agile. Agile Retrospective meetings are held at the end of every sprint giving teams an opportunity to reflect on their previous sprint and improve.
- In Scrum, retrospective is one of the 5 ceremonies that takes place right at the end of the current sprint and before the next sprint planning starts. The outcome is a plan for implementing improvements in the next sprint
- From an Agile perspective, Retrospectives supports the principle – “At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective and then tunes and adjusts accordingly”
What are the core principles of effective retrospectives?
To make full use of sprint retrospective is by ensuring a safe, structured and solution focussed discussion that helps the team improve. Below are a few key principles to make a sprint retrospective even more effective:
- Keep it Timeboxed – Every sprint ensures the retro happens for not more than 45-60 for a 2 week sprint. Keep it structured and concise
- Showcase Improvements – Talk about retro points from previous sprints and check on the improvements
- Safe and Open environment – Create an open blame free environment where team members feel comfortable to share their suggestions
- Use Data to discuss – Use readily available data to discuss any debatable points to ensure every one is aligned
- Outcome Driven – Every retrospective ensure there are 2-3 action items which will help teams improve
Who Should Attend a Sprint Retrospective Meeting?
The sprint retrospective is for the entire scrum team. Development team who are directly the doers of creating the increment. Product owner as their insights on the increment delivered are valuable and the scrum master who actually facilitates the ceremony.
While the stakeholders and managers who are not part of the scrum team are optional unless invited by the team to address a particular impediment or provide specific support.
The role of the Scrum Master as facilitator in Sprint Retrospective
Scrum master plays a vital role in making the retrospective effective. Below are a few key points a scrum master needs to ensure as a facilitator:
- Pre meeting:
- Send the invites well in advance
- Choose the right type of retro to conduct
- Prepare retro boards for the team
- During the Meeting:
- Set the agenda and the norms to the participants
- Ensure a safe environment for the participants to share their views
- Encourage the participants to participate
- Timebox and focus on the agenda
- Convert debates into action items
- Add the action items into the next sprint backlog
- Post meeting:
- Follow up on the action items to ensure the improvements are made
- Resolve dependencies for action items picked up by other team members
When to include stakeholders or management in Sprint Retrospective?
While the stakeholders and managers who are not part of the scrum team are optional unless invited by the team to address a particular impediment or provide specific support, below are a a few examples when stakeholders can be included:
- When the team needs specific resolutions from an external person like constant infra delays
- When there are multiple scrum teams involved and needs co ordination
- During/ after major milestone or release
- When a specific direction is requested by a stakeholder from the team
Sprint Retrospective for cross-functional teams
Below are a few points a team can consider when there are multiple cross functional teams involved in a common shared goal:
- Keep a balanced view and hear out pain points from all the skillsets involved
- Focus on the handoffs, delays and integration problems and address them at the earliest
- Involve everyone in the team, not just the developers or technical people. Also get view points from non technical people, support staff etc to get the big picture
- Encourage the team to reflect on the entire end to end flow from ideation to release
Why Are Sprint Retrospectives Important?
Sprint retrospectives play a crucial role for the team in the cycles of inspecting and adapting for continuous improvements. It helps teams to zoom out, take a perspective of how things are going, where to improve and act on it.
- Connection to Agile values and principles – When it comes to the one of the core pillars of agility which is inspect and adapt, retrospective meeting contributes directly. Agile Retrospectives are a collaborative meeting which brings in the flavour of identifying the gaps and improving as one team
- Role in continuous improvement – At the end of every cadence, teams gather around, zoom out, reflect on their experience in previous sprint and discuss on how to make the experience even better. These cycles eventually becomes a habit which brings in the concept of continuous improvement within the teams
- Impact on team dynamics and project outcomes – Retros build rapport within the team members. When team members openly share their opinions for the betterment of the project, it builds trust within the team. Also this directly improves the quality and the efficiency of the team
Benefits of the Sprint Retrospective Meeting
Sprint retrospective when done with the right intent and effectively, provides a lot of benefits to the teams. Below are a few key benefits of sprint retrospective:
- Sprint Retrospective provides a forum to talk about what has worked and what hasn’t, it helps teams to get better every sprint
- It helps teams in detecting small issues earlier and helps them to get fixed before it becomes too costly
- Talking openly about success and challenges in agile retrospective builds trust within the team
- Sprint Retrospective meeting promotes ownership and accountability because the team members themselves try to fix their problems
- Sprint retrospective meeting is a forum for appreciation and to celebrate wins. This boosts the morale of the team and keep them motivated
- It helps teams to assess their process and modify it according to the team dynamics to keep it fat free
5 Steps for a Successful Sprint Retrospective Meeting
There are 1000+ templates of doing a sprint retrospective meeting and sprint retrospective examples. However, the intention or the core idea behind all those templates remains the same and that is to improve continuously. Below is the 5 step process to ensure you get maximum outcome of a sprint retrospective:
Step 1: Set the tone
- First step is to ensure everyone is on the same page
- Reinstate the agenda
- Set the norms and expectations
- Explain the retro style or template which will be used to the team
Step 2: Gather feedback
- Give some 10-15 mins of time for everyone in the team to input their points for the questions
- Anonymous inputs will help get better points
- Use tools like Eazyretro, Ideaboardz etc to gather data
Step 3: Generate insights
- Let the team take some 5-7 mins to read all the points on the board
- Give teams 2-3 votes so that you can collect a diversified pain point with top 3 most voted points
- Give team 5-10 mins to vote for the points
Step 4: Create action items
- Collate the top 3 most voted points
- Take the first point, understand the problem
- Discuss and brainstorm on the solution for the problem
- Create an action item in the backlog with basic details like assignee, date of resolution
Step 5: Close out the retrospective
- Summarise the top 3 problems and its action items
- Get consensus on the retro close. Check with the team if there is any other low hanging fruit to solve
- Close the meeting
Common Retrospective Challenges and Solutions
Sprint Retrospective meetings are the most ignored meetings in a sprint. And there is a reason for that. Teams do not understand the intent behind the ceremony and it becomes monotonous. Below are a few commonly found challenges with retrospective meetings and how to overcome them:
- Handling retrospective fatigue – If your retrospective starts to feel repetitive or pointless that means the teams have already started feeling the fatigue. One can avoid this by changing the retro styles every sprint, shorten the timebox duration, focus on the impact rather than just routine questions
- Managing Dominant Personalities – Another challenge is that 1 or 2 people keep talking a lot and everyone else keeps quiet. These challenges can be overcome by setting clear expectations like “Only one person talks at a time”, “Everyone gets a chance to talk”, have structured talking, using anonymous tools
- Recurring issues – This is a mood killer for a sprint retrospective. This will reduce trust within the team members. If there are issues which are recurring, involve or escalate to the the right set of stakeholders and decision makers to ensure that the problem is resolved
- Moving from decision to action – In every sprint retrospective, assign some time to also talk about how previous action items were resolved. It is important to have a clear owner, resolution date and follow up plan for the action items to be resolved. This promotes healthy team culture and builds curiosity for the retros
Difference between Sprint Retrospective and other Scrum meetings
Each of the scrum meetings has a unique intent and purpose. Below is a table which can give the differences between them with respect to certain aspects
NOTE: The below table is prepared keeping a 2 weeks sprint in mind
| Ceremony | Sprint Planning | Daily Scrum | Sprint Refinement | Sprint Review | Sprint Retrospective |
| Timebox Duration | 4 Hours | 15 Mins | 1-2 Hours | 2 Hours | 1 Hour |
| Day of the Sprint | Day 1 | Everyday | 5th/6th Day | 10th Day | 10th Day |
| Intent/Purpose | Prepare a plan for the next 10 days | Visualise the progress made towards the goal | Get visibility of the next sprint | Validate and verify if the sprint goal is met | Reflect on the current sprint to improve in the next |
| Participants | Scrum Team | Development team + SM , PO (Optional) | Scrum Team | Development team + SM , PO (Optional) | Development team + SM , PO (Optional) |
Conclusion
Sprint retrospective is not just a ritual or a checklist meeting, they directly contribute to the core aspect of agility that is continuous improvement with inspecting and adapting. Agile retrospective offers structured and recurring opportunities for the team to zoom out, reflect and evolve. The Key is to understand the intent behind retrospective and where it fits in the agility and scrum framework. When it is run effectively, which is facilitated by scrum master, by allowing everyone to talk, share and by focussing on the outcomes it can make a team even more agile.
Teams face a lot of challenges when it comes to conducting retrospective meetings like pointless meetings, not seeing action items closed, one person talking throughout the meeting but it is important to also zoom out, see the pattern and take the right approach to ensure retrospective meetings remain outcome driven and interesting. Whether you’re just starting with Agile or looking to level up your retrospectives, always remember: improvement is a journey, not a destination. Retrospectives are the mechanism that keeps that journey moving forward. With this, our blog on “The complete guide to sprint retrospectives’ comes to an end. We would be glad to discuss your unique agility adoption bottlenecks at Benzne Agile Transformation consulting and support your agile journey
We sincerely hope this has helped our readers and given a fair bit of best practices. Please write to us at “consult@benzne.com” for any feedback or for any support in your agile transformation journey.
Frequently Asked Questions about Sprint Retrospective
1. How long should a sprint retrospective last?
A sprint length defines the timebox duration for a retrospective, that is,
- 45 mins for a 1 week sprint
- 90 mins for a 2 weeks sprint
- 3 hours for a 4 weeks sprint
2. What is the ideal frequency for a sprint retrospective?
Ideally, a Sprint retrospective is recommended after every sprint. However, if the team thinks it is too much of a redundancy and they feel a longer / shorter cadence of retrospective is better for them, they can decide to go with their convenience.
3. What is the role of a product owner in a sprint retrospective?
Product owners also play an important role in decision making in a retrospective meeting. Like, they may offer points and feedback on how product decisions, backlog clarity etc may have impacted the sprint. And also take feedback and act on it, when it is related to requirement clarity, prioritization and communication.
4. Are sprint retrospectives mandatory in Scrum?
Yes, according to the scrum guide it is one of the mandatory ceremonies. Plus it is a strong recommendation from the agile communities to help teams in implementing the mindset of continuous improvement through inspecting and adapting.
