Are Your Retrospectives Retrospective?
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Retrospectives are a vital part of a healthy learning lifecycle, whether you are following the Scrum methodology, another agile methodology, or some other way of working. At their best, retrospectives allow for deep inspection and introspection, identifying potential pathways for improvement, learning, and experimentation.
When retrospectives meet their potential, the team takes an honest look at everything that took place over the period being reviewed, highlighting the things that went well (with the implication that we should do more of that), identifying the actions that did not work as well as intended (with the implication that we should reassess those actions), and discussing opportunities to introduce or try out new practices or strategies going forward. Highlights and things to improve may relate to the processes followed, the quality of the how the team collaborated, and the effectiveness of the product increment added to the product.
However, in many cases, retrospectives don’t achieve this potential and become something less valuable or even a waste of time. Why does this happen? As it turns out, there are a couple of common anti-patterns that I am going to focus on that I think are important to discuss.
Do you find that the retrospective participants seem to be reticent to bring up potential items for improvement or to discuss things that did not go well? If so, this likely indicates that the participants don’t feel that there is a high enough level of trust and psychological safety “in the room” to have honest and potentially critical conversations for fear that they or their teammates will be punished, shamed, or ostracized for admitting failures or failing short of goals. Although developing a high level of trust and psychological safety are often tied to deeper organizational culture roots, sometimes the cause of the reticence is sitting right there in front of us. Do managers attend your retrospectives, in particular your scrum/kanban team retrospectives? If so, please STOP this practice immediately! Managers have no place in team level retrospectives, unless, and only unless the team actively and explicitly invites them to participate in specific retrospective sessions. In all my years leading development teams, I only attended one scrum team retrospective, and that was only after being specifically requested mid-retro by the full team to listen to some process changes they wanted to implement to assist in making them happen. Teams need a safe space to be introspective and brutally honest - make sure you give them that space as a matter of regular practice.
The other anti-pattern I see from time to time is when a team has much to say about what others outside of the team can do to make them more effective, but have little to say about what they themselves on the team can do to make themselves more effective. While there are certainly external dependencies that can create obstacles and challenges for a team and while these certainly need to be addressed in some forum (scrum of scrum meeting, perhaps?), the team retrospective is usually the only place for a team to be introspective and look inward on themselves. When the team is focused on external challenges, especially those that are not within their control, it is a wasted opportunity for self-improvement. Furthermore, the team will make much more progress addressing issues entirely in their own control (their behaviors, processes, ways of working, etc.) than depending on others to change. While from time to time it is okay to have a brief venting session amongst the team, when a team is more focused on external items than internal items, retrospectives tend to term into a “blame fest” with not only a great deal of negative feelings generated but just as importantly no real actionable items to improve things for the team. The good news is that this anti-pattern is imminently fixable via skillful facilitation by the team’s scrum master or other trusted facilitator. Usually once the behavior is pointed out to the team, they realize it is much more effective to focus on internal changes entirely within their control.
For those interested in digging much deeper into retrospectives, two seminal books I’d recommend are: Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby and Diane Larsen and Project Retrospectives by Norman Kerth.
Happy retrospecting everyone!