Difference between revisions of "Scrum Retrospectives"

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Revision as of 15:08, 19 December 2007

Overview

1 day.

The 12th agile principle is, At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly. This implies the retrospective -- a workshop held at the end of each iteration (timeboxed to 3 hours in Scrum) in which the team reflects on their practices and environment, and defines new process experiments (to improve) for the next iteration.

This principle is most certainly last but not least as it is at the heart of empirical process, a key concept in agile methods such as Scrum in which it is understood that there is too much variability and discovery in product development to have a standard defined process. Rather, each team needs to define a "4-week process" empirically based on feedback and inspect and adapt cycles, and then endlessly and relentlessly evolve their process practices. This never-ending improvement is driven by the core practice of the retrospective workshop.

In this course you will learn practical facilitation techniques for retrospectives. In Scrum, these skills are especially relevant for the role of ScrumMaster.

In lean thinking and in Scrum, there is an emphasis on people learning to see the deeper root causes behind problems. There are skillful methods to help this, including causal loop diagramming from system dynamics work, and other analysis tools. You will learn and practice these various methods, to help teams grasp the deeper dynamics of their situation and the environment. And you will learn other classic, useful retrospective techniques including timeline analysis and much more.

You will leave this course with hands-on skills in how to lead a successful retrospective workshop.


Who can benefit

ScrumMasters, change agents, and other retrospective facilitators.


Prerequisites

Familiarity with an agile method, such as Scrum.


Skills Gained

Upon completion of this course, students should be able to coach:

  • the 5 steps in a retrospective workshop
  • root cause and system dynamics analysis
  • causal loop diagramming, 5 Whys, and Ishikawa diagramming
  • timeline analysis
  • brain writing
  • affinity clustering
  • plus-delta
  • a retrospective planning game
  • SMART goals
  • retrospective decision making
  • seeing and resolving conflict while maintaining a sense of safety and respect
  • retrospecting the retrospective
  • appreciations


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