Agile Retrospectives: A Practical Guide for Catalyzing Team Learning and Improvement

Cover
Table of Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I—Nuts and Bolts
	1. Help Your Team Inspect and Adapt
		Five Phases of a Retrospective
		Phase 1: Set the Stage
		Phase 2: Gather Data
		Phase 3: Generate Insights
		Phase 4: Decide What to Do
		Phase 5: Close the Retrospective
		Summing Up the Benefits of This Structure
	2. A Retrospective Custom-Fit to Your Team
		Design a Retrospective for Your Team’s Needs
		Consider the Team’s Context
		Shape the Focus
		Determine Duration
		Select a Location and Setting
		Allocate Time Within the Retrospective
		Select Activities
		DIY Activities
		What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
	3. Leading Retrospectives
		The Facilitator’s Role
		Manage Activities
		Manage Time
		Manage Yourself
		Just Add People
	4. Managing Group Dynamics
		Create Working Agreements
		Draw Out Quiet People
		Create Space for Everyone
		Manage Power Differences
		Avoid Blame
		Deal with Emergent Issues
		Handle Challenging Dynamics
		Remember Your Own Oxygen Mask
Part II—Selecting Activities
	5. Activities to Set the Stage
		Get to Know the Activities
		Introduce the Focus Topic and Agenda
		Check-In Question (Includes One-Word Check-In)
		ESVP
		Focus On/Focus Off
		Retrospective Working Agreements
		Variation: Team Working Agreements as Meeting Ground Rules
		Variation: Meeting Ground Rules for Conflicts or Controversy
		Retrospective Prime Directive
		Fill-in-the-Blanks
		Temperature Reading
		Temperature Reading Alternatives
		The Stage Is Set
	6. Activities to Gather Data
		Get to Know the Activities
		Simple Objective Data Discussion
		Gathering Data from an Improvement Action
		Simple Subjective Data Discussion
		Satisfaction Histogram
		Team Radar
		Timeline
		Variation: Timeline with Color-Coded Dots
		Shared Data Provides the Foundation for Improvement
	7. Activities to Generate Insights
		Get to Know the Activities
		Pattern Spotter Questions
		Fishbone Diagram
		Circles and Soup
		Force Field
		Brainstorming/Filtering
		Prioritize Issues
		With Insights It’s Time to Decide What to Do
	8. Activities to Decide What to Do
		Get to Know the Activities
		Short Subjects
		Express Preference/Dot Voting
		Gradient of Agreement
		Compare Options
		Impact and Energy Decision Criteria
		Design Experiments
		First Steps Toward Action
	9. Activities to Close the Retrospective
		Get to Know the Activities
		Hopes and Wishes
		One “Now” Thing
		Learning Matrix
		Offer Appreciations
		Helped/Hindered/Hypothesis (HHH)
		Return on Time Invested (ROTI)
		Wrapping Up
	10. Retrospectives for Common Scenarios
		A New Team Is Forming
		After a Successful Release
		Poor Feedback from Customers After Delivering a New Feature
		After an Outage or Issue
		Time to Deliver Features Is Increasing
		An Experienced Team That Doesn’t Feel the Need to Run Retrospectives Anymore
		New Team Forming, Issues Loom
		A Team with Low Psychological Safety
		A Conflict on the Team
		Elephant in the Room
		Flows, Not Plans
Part III—Considerations
	11. Retrospectives When the Team Isn\'t Colocated
		Two Principles for Remote Retrospectives
		Putting the Principles into Practice
		Asynchronous Retrospectives
		Hybrid Retrospectives
		General Guides for Adapting Exercises
		Whiteboards or Retrospective Tools?
		Two Final Tips
	12. Catalyzing and Sustaining Change
		Action Items
		Experiments
		Picking a Next Step
		The Change Ambassador
		Influence Others
		Change Your Response
		Learning
		Visualize Your Improvement Item
		Monitoring for Results
		Supporting Larger Changes
		Make It So
	13. Elevating Issues Beyond the Team\'s Control
		Taking Responsibility
		Circles and Soup
		15% Solutions
		Radiate Information Out
		Retrospective Radiators
		Why Not Include Managers?
		Retrospective of Retrospectives
		Subjective Impact Analysis
		Scaling Frameworks
		It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way
	14. Overcoming Objections
		The Vicious Cycle of Disillusionment
		Nothing Changes Anyway
		Retrospectives Are Boring
		No Difficult Conversations
		We’re Too Busy
		We’re Not Agile
		Retrospectives Only Lead to Blame
		Unhelpful Manager Beliefs
		Don’t Be Deterred
	15. Continuing the Learning Journey
		Retrospectives in General
		Facilitation
		Continuous Improvement
		Join the Community
		Continued Learning
A1. Potential Prework Questions
A2. Activities Reference Sheet
Bibliography
Index
	– SYMBOLS –
	– DIGITS –
	– A –
	– B –
	– C –
	– D –
	– E –
	– F –
	– G –
	– H –
	– I –
	– J –
	– K –
	– L –
	– M –
	– N –
	– O –
	– P –
	– Q –
	– R –
	– S –
	– T –
	– U –
	– V –
	– W –
	– Y –
	– Z –