Sprint retrospectives are a great way to get feedback from an Agile team about possibilities for improvements. A sprint retrospective is a process where you look back at your previous Sprint and see any problems or issues that arose during the Sprint. Then, with the Scrum team, you discuss how to address those issues and bring improvements.

However, if you don’t understand how to run them effectively, you could end up wasting time. So, in this article, we will take a deep dive into the Sprint Retrospective, understand their importance, and think about how to conduct them effectively to bring benefits for the team.

The Principle Behind The Sprint Retrospectives

Deming’s PDCA has been a guiding principle to ensure better value delivery for the project teams. The principle applies to the traditional project management approach, where teams execute the projects in a sequential fashion or with the projects that adopt the incremental and iterative practices of Agile.

However, while the planning has been the most prominent area of focus, relegating the C(heck) and A(ct) activities. When teams miss these two aspects, the result is a static plan that doesn’t reflect the changing realities of the project’s ecosystem, resulting in more inefficiencies in the remaining project execution.

Scrum takes a better approach by introducing formal Sprint Retrospective meetings at the end of the Sprint to determine how effective the previous Sprint was. Through such a retrospective meeting, the Agile team discovers ways to improve itself collectively.

What is a Sprint Retrospective?

The Sprint Retrospective is a Scrum meeting where all the team members come together at the end of a sprint to inspect how the last Sprint concerning the individuals, interactions, processes, tools, resources, and the completed tasks went. 

Apart from retrospecting what went well and what didn’t in the last Sprint, the retrospective also guides the Scrum team’s next steps. The team analyzes and identifies possible impactful changes and improvements to the next ones. It also takes decisions that help increase the quality and productivity of the work.

To sum up, the team discusses three main things during a sprint retrospective:

• First, what went well in this Sprint?
• What could be improved and how?
• Finally, what should we commit to in the next Sprint for improvement?

A sprint retrospective is a recurring meeting facilitated by the Scrum Master and involves the entire Scrum team – including the Product Owner. A sprint is complete only after this meeting. 

According to the Scrum Guide, the purpose of this meeting is to plan ways to increase quality and effectiveness. It aligns with the continuous improvement principle of both Agile and Scrum.

What is the difference between a sprint review and a sprint retrospective?

A Sprint has four types of meetings and events conducted in its lifecycle to achieve the project or product goal. They are: 

• Sprint planning
• Daily Scrums
• Sprint Review 
• Sprint Retrospective

As the names suggest, Sprint planning is where you plan the work and goals for the Sprint, and Daily Scrums are the daily 15-minute stand-up meetings. Then there are Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective events at the end of the Sprint. They both might seem the same but are not.

Sprint Review is an event conducted at the end of the Sprint but before the sprint retrospective. Here, the Scrum team presents the outcomes of their work and the project’s progress to the key stakeholders. 

As you can see, other stakeholders are present during sprint review, and it’s not just the Scrum team, while in sprint retrospective, it is just the Scrum team. 

In Sprint Review, the team showcases the work completed by them. It is more of a demo to the stakeholders to get their feedback. Then, in a sprint retrospective, the team reflects on the completed work and identifies room for improvement. 

Another difference between the two is the length. The review shouldn’t go beyond four hours for a month-long sprint, and the retrospective should be within three hours.

Both sprint review and sprint retrospective are held at the end of a sprint but are separate. But some Scrum teams do combine both the meetings, but it is not a good practice. 

And one more thing: sprint retrospective can have games! More on it later.

What are the critical elements of the sprint retrospective?

There are mainly three critical elements of the sprint retrospective: agenda, length, and questions.

Agenda

Now let’s see what exactly happens in a sprint retrospective. The meeting agenda can have various steps, but these are the common ones.

• Goal setting – Here, the goal is that of the meeting. You establish the forum’s objectives and give some time for the team to arrive and settle.
• Gather data – Everyone talks about their experiences and perspectives to gather a shared pool of information. 
• Develop insights – Once the data is in hand, analyze the outcomes by asking why, identifying the patterns, and seeing the big picture.
• Decide the next steps – After identifying the issues and challenges, the team creates a plan to tackle these action items.
• Close the retrospective – While closing, summarize the meeting, clarify any doubts, thank and appreciate the teammates and get feedback on improving the retrospectives.

Length

Each scrum team differs in terms of the project, the number of team members, the industry, the team’s location – same, remote or distributed, and more. So the length of the sprint retrospective depends on these parameters.

Many teams decide the retrospective’s timebox directly proportional to the Sprint length for a shorter sprint. For example, they timebox the retrospective for a two-week sprint at 1.5 hours. However, this is not necessary. 

While the Scrum Guide is silent about this, the retrospective length can be anything below three hours, irrespective of the Sprint length. What is critical is the effectiveness of the discussions and the outcome. A shorter retrospective is preferred, but your team can decide the length as long as it is below three hours for month-long or shorter sprints.

Questions

You cannot discuss without asking questions. But asking the right kind of questions brings forth valuable discussions. The Scrum Master and Product Owner will ask various questions, but the most common and important ones are:

• What went well in the previous Sprint?
• What went wrong in the previous Sprint?
• What did we learn in the previous Sprint?
• What to do differently in the next Sprint?

What are some good things to discuss at a sprint retrospective?

While the four questions above help you conduct a retrospective, over time, you will find that they won’t give you all the answers for improving how you work and interact. Therefore, below are a few additional questions you may consider for more effective retrospectives.

• Do we need to make any changes to the rules guiding our operation?
• How can we improve the Daily Scrum stand-up meetings?
• How can we enhance our communication with the product owners and stakeholders?
• Is there any practice that we need to stop doing?
• Do we need to start using or stop using any tools?
• Does the team composition and alignment need any changes?
• Are we on the right track?

And so on.

In short, don’t just discuss the results. Discuss the team, relationships, communication, collaboration, processes, tools, resources, and other essential things for further improvement.

How to do a compelling sprint retrospective?

If you are a Scrum Master or Product Owner, here are some tips for doing a compelling sprint retrospective:

• Make the retrospective engaging and interesting by adopting novel ideas and methods to improve the interactions. For example, Gamification, storytelling, and other similar techniques can help the Scrum Master improve the Sprint Retrospectives outcomes.
• Be empathetic and understand people’s emotions. Be non-judgemental and unbiased while giving feedback. Let there be constructive criticism and not a blame game.
• If there are introverts or lack of conversation, try to bring forth more participation from the development team members—spice up the meetings with different exercises and games.
• Keep a log of the discussions. Review the notes from previous retrospective meetings.
• Appreciate the team’s efforts and celebrate the success. Don’t forget to congratulate on the small wins.
• You can let others take the lead too. Encourage the team members to add the questions and topics to be discussed. 
• Use tools like Kanban boards to keep the agenda focused. Use whiteboards, colorful markers, and sticky notes.

Who should attend a sprint retrospective, and who should not?

A Scrum Retrospective meeting includes the entire Scrum Team – the Scrum Master, Product Owners, and the developers. 

The presence of the entire Agile team helps to bring out different perspectives while identifying improvements. To make sure that the meeting stays on track, the Scrum Master leads the discussion.

By definition, anyone not part of the Scrum team should not attend the Sprint Retrospective meetings. These would be the managers, clients, investors, and other stakeholders. They usually attend the Sprint reviews but can also be present during the retrospectives if specially invited.

Is a sprint retrospective required? For example, does a Scrum team need a sprint retrospective every Sprint?

Sometimes, a sprint retrospective is required as you already have the sprint review, but a sprint review is just a demonstration of the completed work to get feedback. Also, the absence of stakeholders gives a more comfortable environment for the team members to discuss their challenges.

Some feel it is unnecessary to hold these meetings for every Sprint. However, it’s not because every retrospective meeting prepares the team for the next Sprint with better results.

Let’s see more of the benefits of conducting a sprint retrospective.

• Retrospectives help improve the collaboration between the entire Scrum Team, including the Scrum Master, Product Owner, and the Developers. The presence of all the team members ensures transparency and manages expectations from an effective Scrum team.
• During the meetings, each member brings forth their perspectives giving suggestions for improvements. In addition, there are more ideas and alternative solutions. 
• Every member’s opinion, experience, and views get a stage. This approach increases participation, engagement, and interest among the members. Also, it builds team bonding.

How do you capture and document sprint retrospective results?

A Scrum Master needs to capture and document the results to conduct effective sprint retrospectives. 

What should the document contain? Well, it depends on the project you are working on, but it can include common questions along with the answers like 

• What went well, and what didn’t?
• What challenges are we facing?
• What did we learn?
• How to improve for the next Sprint? 
• What are the next action steps?
• Any suggestions and feedback? And so on.

Don’t forget to take pictures of the whiteboards and kanban boards that your team uses during the meetings. You can even use mind mapping tools. Just make sure that all the documentation is accessible for the entire team.

What are the excellent web-based tools free to conduct sprint retrospective meetings?

Here are some of the excellent web-based tools that you can use to conduct sprint retrospectives.

• Retro – A free online retrospective tool, Reetro.io provides unlimited retro boards, simple UI, automation, and analysis. Also, the boards are customizable.
• TeleRetro – With a simple and appealing design, TeleRetro allows you to export the actions to various project management tools like Jira, Trello, and Microsoft Teams.
• EasyRetro – Formerly known as FunRetro, EasyRetro gives you a basic template to build and customize columns as per your requirements. It also has a like button for each card.
• GoRetro – With GoRetro, you can create unlimited retro boards and add unlimited members to collaborate on them. You also have ten templates that you can customize.
• MetroRetro – MetroRetro’s UI is similar to whiteboards and sticky notes. You can enjoy unlimited boards with unlimited columns.

What are some retrospective games to do at the end of a sprint?

We have already mentioned that a sprint retrospective can have games. The intention is to break the monotony with the recurring meetings and bring out enthusiasm, creativity, and engagement among the team members. Following are a few engaging and effective retrospective ideas.

• Mad, Sad, Glad – A game where members point how they feel about specific observations during the Sprint – mad, sad, or glad.
• Lego Retrospective – You need some Lego blocks for this game. The members build lego models to represent their feelings and perspectives on the Sprint, team, and thoughts. 
• Starfish – The team brainstorms observations and categories into five points – what to start doing, what to keep doing, what to do less, what to do more, and what to stop doing.
• Sailboat – The Sprint is considered a sailboat, and the team identifies what propelled it forward (wind) and what held it back (anchors).
• Return of Time Invested – Game to get feedback on the usefulness of the current retrospective through a chart. 

Wrapping up

So that was our humble attempt at explaining everything about sprint retrospectives. It is a recurring meeting that reflects the progress and actions of the current Sprint and identifies potential improvements for the next.

What are your thoughts on sprint retrospectives? Do tell us in the comments below.