preface

It has been over two years since we introduced Agile, and it has taken a long time to develop a methodology that works for our team: planning meetings + Kanban + daily sit-ups + review presentations + retrospectives. This article will highlight the lessons we learned from conducting retrospectives. Retrospectives are one of the most valuable meetings in Scrum, and while they are important, they are also the ones we find easiest to cut in the real world. Mainly because it requires active participation and thinking on the part of the team or it becomes a mere formality and never comes to an end.

What is a retrospective meeting

As a team activity at the end of an iteration cycle, retrospective meeting is responsible for summarizing the work situation and providing timely feedback and correction according to the work situation.

Review the main process of the meeting

Generally, our retrospective meeting is divided into several parts: 1. Launch — announcement of commencement, special event announcement 2. Team presentation – this is our special, multi-team review, so there is a session where each team chooses one person to do the summary 3. Collect data – hand out notepads and pens, personally review what was done well, what needed to be improved 4. Public data – post everyone’s review on the whiteboard, two areas of good and improved, free discussion (15 minutes), explanation and discussion 5. Choose improvement, each person 3 votes, improvement measures to vote, according to the voting results to determine improvement item 6. Thank you, everyone write a thank you card and give it to the person you want to thank. Happy end

Precautions for conducting meetings

1. Set a safe environment where retrospective meetings don’t turn into critical meetings (managers don’t usually attend) 2. Bring everyone back to the history of the iteration (review mood) 3. Prepare appropriate tools (whiteboard + pen + notepad) 4. 5. Track improvement plans

conclusion

Retrospectives are an effective team review tool that enables team-level feedback and improvement during iterations to drive progress for the entire team. However, all tools and methods depend on the implementation of the personnel, building a team culture is the core work of building a high performance team.