Tag Archives: retrospectives

Extreme Programming, Scrum, Simplifying Software

Only One Retrospective Action-Item at a Time

Retrospective meetings are probably the most misunderstood and underutilized aspect of agile development.

If you know the expression, “the three most important things in real estate are location, location, location,” then you can relate when I say that the three most important things in software development are feedback, feedback, feedback. And, one particularly powerful feedback mechanism is the retrospective meeting. It’s how the developers give feedback to themselves — about their own processes.

I like to hold retrospectives early and often, at least once a week, sometimes once a day. That way, I can capture ideas while they are fresh on everyone’s minds. To make up for it, the retrospectives are kept short, 15 minutes MAX. In fact, if they go longer than 5 minutes, then something is wrong.

Why so short? Continue reading Only One Retrospective Action-Item at a Time →

Extreme Programming, Scrum, Simplifying Business

Take 5 – A Tip for Running Retrospectives

Quite by accident, I discovered a bit of magic to running a 2-hour retrospective meeting. Halfway in, between the brainstorming part and the planning part, I needed to find a resource on my laptop that was eluding me (a file I had misplaced). So, I called for a 5-min break. I left the conference call phone bridge up and told the distributed team members to just set down their phones and come back in five.

What I discovered is that a few people hung out during the break and started to chat socially across the phone bridge — on the subject of marathons and bike races, in this case. I realized that it was a rare occasion for the distributed team to bond on something other than work. So, I let the conversation continue for a good 10 minutes after the break. I also realized that when we eventually got back into the task of turning our brainstorms into action items, it was with a clean slate and a slightly elevated outlook. I’m positive that the decisions we made during the second half of the meeting were better than they would have been had we gone straight from brainstorming to acting. For one thing, the break allowed everyone to unhook themselves from their particular brainstorm contributions and come back at the whole list with a wider view.

So, from now on, I’m going to find any excuse to take a break, and I’ll be sure to specifically prompt everyone to “chat amongst yourselves while I’m busy doing X.”