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Three tips on running your retrospectives the right way

This time I’m covering the regular team improvement meeting, also known as retrospective, or colloquially “retro”. Try the tips below and I guarantee you’ll never look back.

Tip 1: Don’t get distracted

There is a difference between a retrospective and a product review. The retro is designed for suggesting improvements to collaboration, team dynamics and processes so avoid getting into conversations about how to improve the product you’re working on, regardless of how exciting it might be.

Tip 2: Measure and review

Planning and executing work is important but improving your approach to work is too. If you’re doing Agile well, you’ll be tracking your progress every step of the way so be sure to use that data to find out how many items were opened vs closed, how long items were opened before they were closed etc.

Tip 3: Always take action

At the end of the retro there should always be takeaways in the form of improvement items. These items must all:

  • be as clear as possible
  • have an owner
  • have a reasonable due date

Lastly, avoid more than 3-5 actions per retro. The fewer improvement items, the greater the chance they’ll actually be carried out. Be sure to add the improvement items to your Sprint Backlog and Sprint Board too!

Armed with the 3 tips above, you should be able to confidently run your scrum retrospectives at the end of each sprint. Refer back to this page whenever you need a refresher. If you have any questions or topics you’d like me to cover, leave a comment below or send me a message through my website. Thanks for reading. See you next time!

Photo of Georg Fasching

From the desk of Georg Fasching, passionate purveyor of Product Flow, and seasoned executive, team, and organisational change coach.

For his high-leverage, curation of methods and instruction, visit https://get.teamgenius.eu/.

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