Sprint Retrospective: The Team’s Growth Session

The Sprint Retrospective is like a team’s reflection session. Like any other Scrum ceremony, retrospective plays a purposeful role in overall team dynamics and to maximise customer value, but is often neglected. It is taken with a casual attitude of skipping it altogether and moving on to the next sprint which leads to the same issues/problems and therefore the same results.

Wearing a Scrum Masters hat is not easy, we have the responsibility to educate the team on why the retrospectives are important and how effectively we can run these sessions smoothly to get the maximum benefits.

From my past experience, as a Scrum Master, I have tried various ways of doing retrospectives that have been beneficial for me and my team.

1.One Template Does Not Fit All!

Making it all on the confluence with different templates. It is not compulsory to only use – What went bad or What went good. Depending on your team, you can formulate any template that helps to bring the best from your teams.

• The 4Ls method-

The Hot Air Balloon-

There can be many such templates that you can use depending on your team.

2. Action the Action Items!

If you are discussing the same problem in every retrospective, the chances are these problems have never been put into action. The purpose of the retrospective is lost when there is no focus on improving the current issues teams or businesses face on a day-to-day basis. Always take note of action items and assign an owner to them then and there in the session. You can anytime in DSM have an update if that item has been progressed or not.

*Action items should only be wiped out when closed, otherwise they should be carried forward to every sprint retro.

3. Show Some Gratitude!

To boost your team morale, have something like ‘Shoutouts’ by each team member Or announcing ‘Star of the sprint’. This helps in motivating the team to give their best shot.

Kudos Card!

4. Get Crafty!

We do get bored with the same template every sprint. We should make it more interesting by building self-templates on Figma or Miro. You can also take some themes that would really engage the audience making it more fun –

Super Mario template–

5. Engage Everyone!

Always make sure you take a team count on sentiments that are not being practiced by many of us. You can take a poll or anywhere in Confluence/Figma. It can be as simple as:

1. Happy face
2. Meh face (Not Sure)
3. Sad face

Or

5=Super Happy! Don’t change anything

4=Pretty happy, there are some things to fix

3=I can live with this, there are many things to fix

2=Not feeling so good about this right now

1=Very unhappy, I want to move to a new squad

There can be many other such techniques.

6. Read the room!

As a Scrum Master, it is our responsibility to observe that the conversations/discussions within the team members are going in the right direction and we can learn from our mistakes in the current sprint. We must help people open up and collaborate in a healthy way. It gives us an opportunity to learn and reflect back in the upcoming sprint.

So applying all these techniques does help teams to run an effective retro session where everyone is being heard and their sentiments are taken into consideration. This has really given my teammates the boost and the confidence to speak their hearts out during these sessions.

Please do remember “keeping the team’s morale high is as important as getting the deliverables ready.”