Team Practices Group/Scrum Sprint Retrospective

Retrospective

Purpose: The Sprint Retrospective is a soapbox for people to talk about what's working well, what's not working well, and in some cases, what is confusing. It serves as a time to pause in the development (sprint) cycle and reflect on how things went and learn from them. This meeting helps identify steps for specific improvements.

What it's not for:

technical deep dives
planning (there is a separate meeting for this)
nonconstructive complaining
blame and judgement

Before the Retrospective

Set up retrospective collaboration tools (like etherpad)
Make sure velocity metrics are up to date
Note who will/won't be there

During the Retrospective

State what meeting is for, share guidelines (e.g. http://www.retrospectives.com/pages/retroPrimeDirective.html)
Keep unofficial business (who was absent, velocity review) to a minimum (10 minutes rule-of-thumb)
Review previous action items from the last Retro, determine if each is done
Ask team to write down what's been working well, what hasn't, what's confusing (5 minute timebox, 1 minute warning)
Briefly review what worked well, and celebrate!
Review what didn't work well and what is confusing in order to clarify and give any additional context
- Keep it brief and clear per item. Time for action items comes later.
Vote in order to prioritize items: 3 votes each, voting on what didn't work well and what is confusing
Identify top three items and isolate (WMF teams move them to bottom of etherpad section)
With the team, identify actions to take to improve the item in question; make action as specific as possible and identify an owner

After the Retrospective

Move (etherpad) notes to their (wiki) archive
Distill action items and email them to the team mailing list with link to (wiki) archive notes
Check in with team about action items if needed