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The essential element of Agile Retrospectives that no-one is talking about
It is everyone’s favourite agile event, isn’t it? Well, every agile coach’s favourite agile event, anyway. Just look at how many books and articles are dedicated to the topic of making your restrospective better.
So why — at least in my experience — are they little better than they’ve ever been?
I think it’s because there’s one thing that none of those articles seem to be addressing.
There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of topics for your retro. There are many models for capturing the things team members want to address — Mad / Sad / Glad, Stop / Start / Continue, What went Well / What didn’t etc. etc.
The most popular book on the topic of Retrospectives is by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen, which defines an agenda for retrospectives in 5 stages, starting with setting the stage, and ending with closing the meeting. It’s a good agenda, and it works. But this agenda, too, fails to address the one key factor in all of this (although the book does cover it in chapter 10).
What is this key factor, this essential element in Retrospectives? It is this — once you have gathered the team together, once you have identified and presented the data, generated insights, prioritised a list of action items and closed the…
