The Retro. This often overlooked agile ceremony is the brains behind the operation, it's the cog that turns the wheel faster, the water that keeps the boat moving. And so many companies get it wrong.
Granted, some of you might be reading this and think 'hey, we're doing good with it' and I guess congratulations are in order. More power to your team or whoever organises it. But I've worked in and seen others work in environments where our poor old friend The Retro gets left behind and buried under stacks of paper entitled 'Time Constraints'.
The Retro should not be left to fester and hide and be grateful for the odd occasion it does come out and see the other agile ceremonies playing. They are a time of reflection. They are a time to cast your mind back in a nostalgic kind of way and ponder the 'what ifs'. That's why they are so important. They increase productivity in the future by focussing on issues (things that are generally fundamental flaws) and performance gains (things that worked, but could potentially be improved).
The purpose of The Retro is to iteratively improve a team's throughput by way of discussion. This is done usually at the end of every sprint, or end of a project, or both. The way teams and businesses get this wrong is seeing that as a meeting. In a room. Sometimes with no windows. You know what a code smell is, right? This is a retro smell. Go to a neutral environment where team members feel comfortable and will open up more.
Key pointers
Here's a list of things to put in place to make your next retro successful.
Take your retros off-site. The most important one and the title of this post. I can't stress this one enough. This isn't your employees taking advantage. This isn't consuming time and/or money. The most productive retros that I've been involved in have been off-site away from the office space. This is an excellent time for building bonds and relationships within the team that go beyond work. Decide a place, be that a restaurant or bar (or even a Weatherspoon's if it's been a particularly gruelling financial month), and go. Grab a table, lay the post-it notes on the table and get the drinks in. Yes, alcohol is included in that. Why? To put it bluntly, because now that developer that was reserved about opening up is now three minutes in to a fine critique on the testing principles of the team. And guess what happens on the back of that? More discussion. And the loop continues. You catch my drift.
Don't set an agenda. Remember this should be informal. Setting an agenda not only limits discussion, but also makes people feel they need to contribute. For example, if an agenda item was set to discuss a new testing strategy and the impact it had, members of the team would feel they would need to contribute to that discussion and prepare before the retro accordingly. Let this happen naturally instead. Assume if a topic is important enough that it will get brought up. This allows for total autonomy amongst the developers, who are now the driving force behind the retros discussion points.
Promote free discussion. Unless a conversation is getting particularly off-topic, let people speak freely and openly about their problems, successes and everything in-between. Stop within reason.
Bonus! Have a 'thank you' section. A bit of appreciation never hurts. Get the team to write down (if they want) anyone they want to thank for whatever reason. 'Spent the day helping me with some code that I just couldn't get working', 'stayed late to rollback a regression', etc, etc. It's nice to know what you're doing is being noticed, after all.
These are general pointers, nothing more, nothing less. I'm not a scrum master, however I've attended enough retros to now realise what makes them work from a developer's point of view. I hope you found at least some of these things helpful. Maybe you do them all, maybe you don't. But you should definitely try them if you haven't. Do it for our dear friend The Retro.
The Retro doesn't like being cast aside or left behind, because when you think about it, it's the only agile ceremony that cares about you.
Written with <3 at forcepush.io
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