Collaboration & Process › Agile & Delivery Process

Retrospective

A regular meeting to reflect on how the team works and improve it.

Also known as: retro, sprint retrospective

A retrospective is a regular meeting where a team looks back on recent work and asks how it went. What worked, what didn’t, and what the team will change next time. In Scrum this is the Sprint Retrospective, held at the end of each sprint. Other teams hold one on a fixed schedule or after a release.

Formats vary. A simple one asks three questions: what should we keep doing, what should we stop, and what should we try. Whatever the format, the output should be a small number of concrete actions, each with an owner.

Keep:  pairing on tricky bugs
Stop:  late changes to the sprint scope
Try:   a 15-minute review of the backlog every Monday, owned by Grace

The classic mistake is listing problems without picking actions, or picking actions nobody owns. The next retrospective then repeats the same complaints. Check last time’s actions at the start of each one, and drop any you didn’t follow through on.