open ro lightningretrospectives

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Learn fromExperience withRetrospectives

Rachel Daviesrachel@agilexp.com

Sankofa bird - “go back + fetch it”

What is a Retrospective?

A meeting where a team looks back ona past period of work so that they canlearn from their experience and applythis learning to future projects

Pioneered by Norm Kerth

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No time to improve?!

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Groundhog Day

“Without retrospectives you willfind that the team keepsmaking the same mistakesover and over again.”Henrik Kniberg

Bridge Model

Past Future

What happened? What to change?

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Structure Flow of Conversation

From “Agile Coaching” book

Cloudy Thinking

If team is not clear on what to do then nothing happens

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Unconnected Ideas

Ideas must connect to experience and translate to action.

Slow Down!

• People will not talk if you donot listen to them

• Invite everyone to share whathappened

• Take time to gather the wholestory

• Involve each member of theteam

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Living in the past

Look back but also take time to look forward.Forget about making lists of what went well, etc.

Thinking too big!

Be realistic! How much can you really take on?

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Incomplete Actions

Before creating any newactions, see if oldactions are Done.

Take time to understandwhy actions are notfinished.

Blaming

Don’t waste time blaming! Take a systems view to look for improvements.

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Make Time for Ideas

Encourage ideas fromyour team

Consider more than onesolution!

Action Plans

What steps will be taken towardssolving the problem?

Who will check up to make surethe action is implemented?

Make actions visible:– Allow time in plan– Review progress– Care if no change happens

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Beware of Invisible Actions

Actions from retrospective need to be visible to team andmanagement.

No owner

When no one on team champions a change, it gets forgotten

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Always the Same Owner

One person takes on actions for the team rather thansupporting team to do actions themselves.

Summary of Retrospective Smells

• Same set of actions come up but not done– Vague, no owner, too big

• Not touching real issues• If this continues then you waste time of

participants!

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Experiment with your Retrospectives!

• Retrospectives areabout learning fromexperience

• Experiment and adaptthe format togenerate new insights