What is Agile Retrospectives? Definition, Examples, Types

No project goes exactly the way it was planned. Even in projects that have done exceedingly well there will be challenges that should be addressed. This is true about Sprints as well. Each Sprint is planned with the set agenda of achieving specific results or outcomes within a specified time limit.  This is typically between two weeks to four weeks depending on the amount of work that needs to be completed. 

If the sprint does not go as planned there needs to be an analysis of what went wrong. Even if Sprint meets its goals, it still needs to be analyzed to identify what aspects of it can be done better. This is the guiding principle of a retrospective.  

What is an Agile Retrospective?   

Agile retrospectives are regular meetups in an Agile team where all the team members come together and discuss how to make themselves more effective based on what they observed during the previous cycle.  Retrospectives are usually done between Sprint cycles so that the team can look at the pervious Sprint and identify what worked, what went wrong, what could be done better etc. Agile retrospective is one of the 12 principles of Agile development as outlined in the Agile manifesto. 

The purpose of running such retrospectives is to leverage continuous improvement which is a core feature of Agile. It ensures that problems encountered in one sprint do not repeat in the next one. It gives a chance for every team member to give input with their experience during the previous cycle. The team gets a chance to examine each process, the areas where collaboration is needed more, and the adjustments that need to be made to make the process smoother and more effective. Reviewing Agile retrospective examples can help teams better understand how to structure these sessions and identify actionable improvements. There should be an environment that is free of fear or judgement for all team members to talk freely without being blamed for anything.  

Why Run a Retrospective?   

Running retrospectives are central to the success of an Agile team. It provides many benefits to all the stakeholders.  

• Continuous improvement is one of the biggest factors that make retrospectives vital. Retrospectives allow to identify areas of improvement whether it is in processes, structure, or in the way of working. The team can increase its efficiency and productivity through continuous improvements. 
• Communication and collaboration are also given a significant boost by retrospectives. It gives all team members a common platform to identify areas where better collaboration is needed and to identify and fix communication gaps. 
• Identifying issues and challenges is another core objective of retrospectives since all team members can work together to arrive at solutions using their different perspectives to the same issues. 
• Establishing ownership is key to having engaged teams that take proactive decisions and work well together. Retrospectives can be used to make accountability clear, and individuals can be responsible for their actions with the awareness of how it fits in the bigger picture. 
• Higher engagement is possible in teams due to events like the retrospective since everyone gets a chance to talk freely about different aspects of work and they also get clarity into what everyone else is responsible for. This makes it easier for problems to be addressed in a timely manner. 

Types of Agile Retrospective Techniques  

There are quite a few Retrospective techniques that are employed to run a good retrospective. Each technique has its own benefits, but the objective stays largely the same. 

1. Start, Stop, Continue 

This is a technique where each participant in the retrospective identifies things that they should start doing to improve how work is done, stop doing things that are not working, and continue things that are working well. This classifies aspects related to work in three categories. It’s helpful in identifying action items and prioritizing such changes based on their impact.  

2. The 4 Ls 

The four Ls stand for Liked, Learned, Lacked, and Longed For. Similar to the start, stop, continue method, this approach divides points into four categories. Liked means things that worked well. Learned stands for any new learning that came out of the sprint like new insights. Lacked refers to things that did not work as planned. Longed fot means something desirable that would have been nice to have. 

3. Mad, Sad, Glad 

This is like the previous two methods with Mad denoting things that did not work well and led to frustration. Sad are things that were disappointing in general, and Glad are the things that worked well.  With this the retrospective could focus on finding solutions for things in the mad bucket and fixing the things in the sad bucket. While things in the glad bucket are not a problem, these things are the strengths that the team could leverage on. 

4. Sailboat 

This is also a technique that uses sailboat as an analogy to categorize things into four buckets. Under Wind are the things that pushed the project forward. Anchor represents things that held the project back. Rocks represent the risks faced, and Treasure points towards the successes achieved. 

5. 5 Whys 

This is a technique of root cause analysis used to identify underlying problems in specific issues. Digging deep into the issue will uncover insights that will help in addressing the problem in a comprehensive manner. 

6. Dot Voting 

This is an approach which is used to prioritize items that need to be discussed. The voting clarifies what issues matter the most and require the most attention.   

7. KALM 

This is another way of categorizing things as Keep, Add, Less, and More, depending on what worked and what did not. 

8. ROTI 

ROTI or Return On Time Invested is a method to assess if the retrospective was valuable and how to improve it in future cycles. 

How to Run your First retrospective?  

Running a retrospective is a significant undertaking, especially if it’s being done for the first time. It is important that all the participants understand the significance of it and come to it with the right mindset. The agenda must be clear, and you should also know which techniques should be tried to run a successful retrospective.  There should be enough time allocated to each stage of the process so that everybody’s time is considered, and nobody feels like their time is being wasted. 

• Set expectations right by defining the goals and getting people to understand the objective is to improve performance and not to assign blame or find individual shortcomings. This will encourage honesty and better communication.   
• Gather Feedback on the sprint by asking everyone to write feedback. Use techniques that help team members to categorize their thoughts or encourage them to come up with points in a coherent manner. You can use a board to visualize the points that come out.  
• Discuss the important points that come out, the frequency of how many people raised similar points can be an indication of the significance of a point. You can even have a quick vote to understand which issue should be discussed first. Discussions must be focused on either finding a solution or taking action that helps the future sprints. 
• Make an action plan for things to do in the next sprint so that the outcomes of the retrospective are put into action. Retrospectives are bound to fail if the same points keep repeating in every retrospective.  
• End the retrospective by collecting feedback on its effectiveness and express gratitude for the active participation. Share the findings and action items with the team so that they do not forget about the whole thing once they walk out of the event. 

Agile Retrospective Best Practices   

The following are a few best practices you can observe to ensure the success of your retrospective. 

• Honest, open, and without fear: The participants in a retrospective must be made to understand the scope and purpose of the exercise is to improve as a team and not to assign blame. This is necessary for an open and honest discussion. 
• Focused and time bound: The discussion should be focused on an action that either solves a problem, addresses a concern, or results in an improvement in outcomes. 
• Formats: Using various retrospective models will speed up the process and give a structure to the discussion. The model to be selected will depend on you particular requirements.  
• Constructive: The discussion in any retrospective should be with a view to improving processes, solving problems, or increasing efficiency. The direction of the discussion should have a constructive goal.  
• Prioritize: Pick items that have high impact and are actionable. You can also vote to get an idea about which topic deserves more time.  
• Actionable: Focus on topics that will result in actionable insights that will have a higher impact. 
• Problem solving: Keep a problem-solving mindset and use diverse perspectives to form a broader understanding and get a solution that helps everyone. 
• Follow through: Put measures in place to make sure the action items are executed in the subsequent sprint and not forgotten till the next retrospective. 
• Engaging: Take measures to make the whole retrospective engaging for everyone involved, this is where different frameworks and models will come in handy. 

Agile Retrospective Templates

A Successful Agile retrospective can be done in the following five steps: 

1. Set Expectations: Select the team members, the venue, the facilitator, the time, and duration of the retrospective. Get participants to understand the objective. Use an icebreaker to start a conversation. Maintain an environment that encourages participation and is free of judgement. 
2. Gather Feedback: Use formats to generate feedback from the participants. Find out what went well, what went wrong, what were the challenges, what were the successes, what should have been done better etc. 
3. Discuss: organize and categorize the data generated to dive into a focused discussion on how to use this data in the next sprint. Solve problems, identify vulnerabilities, leverage strengths, focus on high impact and actionable points. 
4. Generate Action Items: Fix action items that can bring the most benefit or solve major problems. Assign owners for these action items and timelines so that it will not be forgotten. 
5. Close: Close the retrospective by summarizing the findings and thanking the participants. Gather feedback on the effectiveness of the retrospective as well. 
6. Follow up: Do periodic follow ups on the action items listed after the retrospective to get the full benefit of it. 

Conclusion

Retrospection is an integral part of the Agile approach as we have seen. It takes the best out of the Agile approach and leverages collaboration across the team to come up with solutions to common problems, improve communication, get everyone aligned on the common goals, drive productivity, efficiency and more. Retrospectives add value to the team by committing the entire team to continuous improvement. It also ensures that the whole team has a greater degree of engagement in the project, and everyone will take ownership of their responsibilities proactively.