Articles

The Sprint Retrospective holds significant importance within the Scrum framework, serving as a dedicated opportunity for the team to reflect on their performance and identify areas for improvement. This meeting, held at the end of each Sprint, allows team members to collectively review their processes, practices, and interactions during the iteration. By fostering open communication and collaboration, the retrospective encourages team members to share their observations, insights, and suggestions for enhancing their effectiveness. Through this reflective process, teams can uncover strengths to reinforce and weaknesses to address, leading to continuous improvement in subsequent Sprints.

Retrospect Sprint

In this process, the Scrum Master and Scrum Team meet to discuss the lessons learned throughout the Sprint. This information is documented as lessons learned which will be applied to future Sprints. As a result, there may be agreed actionable improvements or updated Scrum Guidance Body Recommendations. This process is an essential component of the continuous improvement in Scrum. Agreed actionable improvements are the primary output of the Retrospect Sprint process. This is a list of actionable items that the team has come up with to address problems and improve processes in order to enhance team performance in future Sprints. Once the agreed actionable improvements have been elaborated and refined, action items to implement the improvements may be assigned by the Scrum Team and each action item will have a defined due date for completion. The Retrospect Sprint Log is a record of the opinions, discussions, and actionable items raised in a Retrospect Sprint Meeting. The Scrum Master usually facilitates creation of this log with input from Scrum Core Team members. The collection of all Retrospective Sprint Logs becomes the project diary, which includes details on project successes, issues, problems, and resolutions. These logs are public documents available to anyone in the organization. 

Following the two processes of the Review and Retrospect phase helps those involved in a Scrum project to review deliverables and identify impediments to neutralize in the future. Remember that the processes do not need to be performed sequentially or separately. They can be adjusted to complement the specific requirements of each project. Before leaving the Review and Retrospect phase, however, it is imperative to analyze the project and determine what worked and what didn’t work.

Primary Objectives of the Meeting are to Identify three Specific Things:

1. Things the team needs to keep doing: best practices
2. Things the team needs to begin doing: process improvements
3. Things the team needs to stop doing: process problems and bottlenecks

Other tools used in the Process of Retrospect Sprint are:

1. ESVP
2. Speed Boat
3. Metrics and Measuring Techniques
4. Scrum Guidance Body Expertise

The outputs of the Retrospect Sprint are:

1. Agreed Actionable Improvements
2. Assigned Action Items and Due Dates
3. Proposed Non-Functional Items for Prioritized Product Backlog
4. Retrospect Sprint Log(s)
5. Scrum Team Lessons Learned
6. Updated Scrum Guidance Body Recommendations

How is the Retrospect Sprint Meeting Related to the ‘Inspect-adapt’ Aspect of Scrum?

The Retrospect Sprint Meeting is an important element of the ‘inspect-adapt’ Scrum framework and it is the final step in a Sprint. All Scrum Team members attend the meeting, which is facilitated or moderated by the Scrum Master. It is recommended, but not required for the Product Owner to attend. One team member acts as the scribe and documents discussions and items for future action. It is essential to hold this meeting in an open and relaxed environment to encourage full participation by all team members. Discussions in the Retrospect Sprint Meeting encompass both what went wrong and what went right.