I have come to believe that the Retrospective is the most important scrum ceremony, and coming from me, that is a strong statement. After all, I’ve facilitated or participated in hundreds, maybe thousands, of agile ceremonies by now. And, as a dedicated agile missionary I believe in the power of all four required Scrum Ceremonies: Sprint Retrospective, Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, and of course, the Daily Scrum. All four are required. All four are powerful. You can’t afford to skip any one of them.
But somehow, the Retrospective is the ceremony that many scrum teams are tempted to skip when time is tight – and let’s face it, time is always tight for a scrum team. The Retrospective is one ceremony that no team can afford to miss. Here are a few reasons why:
Retrospectives are Essential to Self-Management
Every successful scrum team is self-directed, possessing the skills and tools needed for success as well as the trust from their stakeholders and management team. In the scrum model, no one is “in charge”; the team directs itself, based on feedback and input from the product owner, architects, UX designers, and of course the product consumers themselves. Though the product owner decides what is important from a product perspective, the team decides how to accomplish the product development. It’s not always easy to be in charge, so the team needs the retrospective to vent, make decisions, and iterate on its own processes in order to improve and grow.
Retrospectives Feed Empowerment
Any team can use improvement. After all, nothing is perfect! Rather than responding to direction from managers, scrum retrospectives enable the team to determine their own improvement program and to self-manage the improvement. The managers trust the team to make key improvements and challenge the team to stretch themselves, but in the end the team decides what to improve and how. This is another facet of empowerment that is essential to building a high performing team.
Retrospectives Enable High Performing Teams
As described above, self-directed high-performing scrum teams relentlessly focus on self-improvement, learn continuously, and don’t wait for direction. They move quickly to iterate and improve, and manage their own improvement programs. The retrospective is therefore a key tool of the very best scrum teams, and those teams work hard to protect their retrospective time. They also focus on applying the most important – the most valuable – improvements or ideas that surface in the retrospective.
Retrospectives Drive Double Loop Learning
A big benefit of the iterative approach of agile and scrum is found in the various feedback loops in the process; even the daily scrum is an opportunity for the team to learn and adapt every day. These single loops of learning enable the team to iterate, experiment, and produce ever-improving product increments. The retrospective presents a team with the opportunity to not only observe and improve, but to truly probe for and make lasting improvements in throughput and efficiency.
To better understand the concept of double loop learning, consider the example of a room thermostat. Set the thermostat to 68 degrees and it will turn off when the temperature in the room exceeds 68, and turn on when it dips below 68. The thermostat makes corrections based on information it receives about the temperature of the room. This is a single loop of learning and adaptation, and this certainly works. But let’s say that thermostat could somehow question the goals of the temperature setting – validating the presence of people in the home, learning about the comfort of people in the home, etc. – and adjusting its settings to maximize HVAC efficiency and comfort. In this second example, the thermostat is employing a double loop of learning to become an ever improving – and slightly scary! – HVAC system.
The retrospective is really the one dedicated time in the scrum process for the team to employ double loop learning, moving from the “how” or “what” to improve into the “why” it should improve. The retrospective is the most powerful tool in the team’s arsenal – the not-secret weapon of the best scrum teams, as they move to high performance levels.
Teams are always pressed for time, and as the pressure mounts you may be tempted to cut a few corners by trimming some of your scrum ceremonies. If this happens, make smart choices. Perhaps you can use time-boxing and focused facilitation techniques to keep your team’s ceremonies on point. But whatever happens, do not cancel nor short cut your Retrospective – especially in times of high pressure. When the team is under pressure, you need the retrospective more than ever. Focus on making your retrospectives value added and highly proficient.
Written by Christine Novello
Leave a Reply