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Sprint Retrospective - Dysfunctions and How to overcome them
- Sprint Retrospective is the concluding event on the Sprint, timeboxed for 3 hours or less for 1 month Sprint. It begins by exploring the current sprint, its outcome, the way team members interacted, the processes-the tools used and all the interconnections between them.
- Sprint Retrospective has a clear purpose - to find how the Scrum Team can become more effective in the upcoming sprints. However, the Sprint Retrospective is often marred with multiple dysfunctions such as the retrospective that never happened, the retrospective which has no objective, the argumentative retrospective, the retrospective with no outcome, and the retrospective with a huge list of todo items.
- A Scrum Master, as a facilitator, may bring in variety by trying different techniques for retrospective or even better delegate the responsibility to facilitate to other team members.
- Having a clear agenda or objective set up at the beginning of Sprint Retrospective often helps the Scrum team to be focused and come up with targeted improvements.
- Once improvements are identified and if they are not implemented then that also leads to disengagement of Scrum Team from the event. Having clear and concise improvements that can be implemented without outside support and within the team will give the team a sense of accomplishment and they would look forward to being part of the Sprint Retrospective.
- To ensure that improvements identified are actually implemented, I always suggest the team make the improvements SMART. An improvement item that is Specific, Measurable, Time-bound will enable the team to focus on getting it done.
- Finally, to really implement any improvements empowerment and ownership is needed. There is no point in having a long list of improvements but no one is accountable for getting them done.
- A Scrum Master should empower the team to decide on which improvements to focus on, who will take the ownership of and how it will be done. Establishing clear ownership avoids the “bystander effect”, gets the improvements implemented and enables the team to see how retrospective is making the team more effective.
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