Improving Agile Retrospectives

Agile retrospectives help you get to the root of your real problems, so you can solve them quickly and effectively. They're the cornerstone of a successful continuous improvement process, and one of your best tools for triggering positive cultural change. In Improving Agile Retrospectives, leading agile coach/trainer Marc Loeffler combines practical guidance, proven practices, and innovative approaches for maximizing the value of retrospectives for your team--and your entire organization. You can apply his powerful techniques in any project, agile or otherwise. These techniques offer exceptional value wherever continuous improvement is needed: from "lessons-learned" workshops in traditional project management to enterprise-wide change management. Loeffler's detailed, results-focused examples help you recognize and overcome common pitfalls, adapt retrospectives to your unique needs, and consistently achieve tangible results. Throughout, he integrates breakthrough concepts, such as using experimentation and learning from system thinking. He presents small ideas that make a big difference--because they're deeply grounded in real experience. * Learn from failures and successes, and make good things even better * Master facilitation techniques that help you achieve your goals (and have fun doing it) * Prepare your retrospective so it runs smoothly * Practice techniques for generating actionable insights * Keep your retrospectives fresh and interesting * Perform retrospectives that address the entire system, not just your team * Focus on your "better future" with solution-focused retrospectives * Learn how to avoid typical pitfalls when facilitating retrospectives * Lead retrospectives across multiple distributed teams * Use retrospectives to support large-scale change

Project retrospectives help teams examine what went right and what went wrong on a project. But traditionally, retrospectives (also known as “post-mortems”) are only held at the end of the project—too late to help. You need agile retrospectives that are iterative and incremental. You need to accurately find and fix problems to help the team today. Now Esther and Diana show you the tools, tricks and tips you need to fix the problems you face on a software development project on an on-going basis. You’ll see how to architect retrospectives in general, how to design them specifically for your team and organization, how to run them effectively, how to make the needed changes and how to scale these techniques up. You’ll learn how to deal with problems, and implement solutions effectively throughout the project—not just at the end. This book will help you: Design and run effective retrospectives Learn how to find and fix problems Find and reinforce team strengths Address people issues as well as technological Use tools and recipes proven in the real world With regular tune-ups, your team will hum like a precise, world-class orchestra.

Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives helps you and your teams to do retrospectives effectively and efficiently. It's a toolbox with many exercises for facilitating retrospectives, supported with the "what" and "why" of retrospectives, the business value and benefits that they bring, and advice for introducing and improving retrospectives. If you are a Scrum master, agile coach, project manager, product manager or facilitator then this book helps you to discover and apply new ways to do Valuable Agile Retrospectives with your teams. With plenty of exercises you can develop your own personal Retrospectives Toolbox to become more proficient in doing retrospectives and get more out of them.

Agile retrospectives help you get to the root of your real problems, so you can solve them quickly and effectively. They’re the cornerstone of a successful continuous improvement process, and one of your best tools for triggering positive cultural change. In Improving Agile Retrospectives, leading agile coach/trainer Marc Loeffler combines practical guidance, proven practices, and innovative approaches for maximizing the value of retrospectives for your team—and your entire organization. You can apply his powerful techniques in any project, agile or otherwise. These techniques offer exceptional value wherever continuous improvement is needed: from “lessons-learned” workshops in traditional project management to enterprise-wide change management. Loeffler’s detailed, results-focused examples help you recognize and overcome common pitfalls, adapt retrospectives to your unique needs, and consistently achieve tangible results. Throughout, he integrates breakthrough concepts, such as using experimentation and learning from system thinking. He presents small ideas that make a big difference—because they’re deeply grounded in real experience. • Learn from failures and successes, and make good things even better • Master facilitation techniques that help you achieve your goals (and have fun doing it) • Prepare your retrospective so it runs smoothly • Practice techniques for generating actionable insights • Keep your retrospectives fresh and interesting • Perform retrospectives that address the entire system, not just your team • Focus on your “better future” with solution-focused retrospectives • Learn how to avoid typical pitfalls when facilitating retrospectives • Lead retrospectives across multiple distributed teams • Use retrospectives to support large-scale change

This is the digital copy of the printed booik (Copyright © 2001). With detailed scenarios, imaginative illustrations, and step-by-step instructions, consultant and speaker Norman L. Kerth guides readers through productive, empowering retrospectives of project performance. Whether your shop calls them postmortems or postpartums or something else, project retrospectives offer organizations a formal method for preserving the valuable lessons learned from the successes and failures of every project. These lessons and the changes identified by the community will foster stronger teams and savings on subsequent efforts. For a retrospective to be effective and successful, though, it needs to be safe. Kerth shows facilitators and participants how to defeat the fear of retribution and establish an air of mutual trust. One tool is Kerth's Prime Directive: Regardless of what we discover, we must understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job he or she could, given what was known at the time, his or her skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand. Applying years of experience as a project retrospective facilitator for software organizations, Kerth reveals his secrets for managing the sensitive, often emotionally charged issues that arise as teams relive and learn from each project.

FunRetrospectives is a book with the necessary tools to develop the main element of continuous improvement: an effective, committed team! With several years working with agile teams, Paulo Caroli and Tainã Caetano Coimbra know there are two main ingredients to finding the path to success and continuous improvement. First, a team that is aligned and committed to the project. Second, a work environment that fosters collaboration, one in which everyone can openly reflect, debate, and learn. But how can we achieve that? Each person in a team brings a different life experience and perspective, and we know that a group of people doesn't become a team overnight. That's why the main purpose of this work is to offer the necessary activities and tools to make everyone comfortable, aligned, and ready to be part of the best possible experience. The authors have gathered years of experience in this book, offering simple and straightforward activities. There will always be ups and downs, but everything that happens is essential for the team's growth, and a fun, safe environment allows you to get the best out of every situation.

Metaphors from our day-to-day life can throw new perspectives when juxtaposed with professional or personal experiences. What seemingly looks like a mundane chore can give great insights with interesting and innovative improvisations. The author, a committed technologist, makes this brave and successful attempt to explain retrospectives using contexts from day-to-day life with suitable graphic representations for ease of understanding. The book focuses on 'retrospectives' as a platform for teams as well as individuals to reflect and improve. She strongly advocates that, regardless of the industry, teams need to have an experimental mindset to continuously learn and adapt. Thus, reflecting on diversified areas such as work-life balance, goals, team collaboration, product development, process, technology, delivery, or targets is an ongoing process that happens either explicitly or implicitly. The book highlights the need for teams and individuals to come out of their comfort zones and think out-of-the box, while staying in sync with their individual and organization's goals. Illustrations shown in the book can be customized according to organizational or individual aspirations.

Agile teams have been struggling with the concept of continuous improvement since the first Agile frameworks were developed, and still very little has been written about the practice of continuous improvement in Agile environments. Although team retrospectives have been prescribed and some practices have been introduced in order to implement and facilitate them, the truth is that most Agile teams are conducting dull retrospectives that end with a list of things that have been done wrong, just to repeat the same list two weeks later at the next meeting. Instead of listing hundreds of Japanese-labeled tools, this book gives you practical insights into how to spot improvement opportunities, how to plan for improvement and how to engage everyone in your company in the Kaizen process. In addition, it will also provide you with 27 proven practices and 12 bonus activities to introduce into your retrospectives in order to keep them fresh, creative and exciting, so you can promise a team that, in a year’s time, no two retrospectives will be alike. This book helps you as a manager, team leader, change agent or consultant in any type of organization to unleash the real power of Kaizen cultures – no matter what kind of organization, market, product, technology, vision, goal or size. It provides you with the background, tools and practical hints on how to engage your organization in a process of continuous quest for new and better ways of performing.