Retrospectives are the ultimate and indispensable tool of the agile team. If you do retrospectives correctly, you can increase your team's satisfaction and productivity using simple methods. All too often, the potential of retrospectives is often not exploited at all or not fully, although the advantages of a regularly conducted retrospective are clear:
- It offers your team a platform for reflection, dialogue and improvement and promotes a culture of continuous learning.
- By increasing effectiveness and productivity, team performance is significantly accelerated.
- Obstacles (Impediments) that slow down the entire team are identified and can be eliminated.
- The mood in the team can be measured and improved regularly. This avoids stress and dissatisfaction at an early stage.
- Mutual appreciation (kudos) within the team is encouraged.
In order for a retrospective to be carried out successfully, you should consider the following points:
- The retrospective should best begin with a mood survey in the team (team radar). This also helps to uncover the crucial obstacles and problems later.
- The retrospective is a team event where personal openness is important and should therefore only be carried out by members of the team to avoid external influences.
- A retrospective is a team-building event where respect and appreciation of colleagues comes first. Finger-pointing and blaming have no place here.
- To uncover obstacles and problems together, you should use an established method, such as 'Mad Sad Glad'. The best way to do this is to write your problem topics on cards (e.g. Post-it), stick them on a whiteboard and finally prioritize them.
- Only select as many of the problem topics as you can actually work on or eliminate by the next retrospective. The topics with the highest priority are always processed first.
- The solution to remove an obstacle is discussed in advance in the team and a person responsible for each problem issue in the team should always be appointed to take care of it.
- The team also tracks the progress of a problem topic in each retrospective. To do this, you should show in the retrospective which topics have already been dealt with and which could not yet be eliminated.