Rachel Davies

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Retrospectives
Reflect together to tune the way you work
Rachel Davies
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Session Overview

• Guide on how to run a retrospective 30 mins
• Time for
• Questions 10 mins
• Practical experience 35 mins
• Mini-retrospective on Agile Development
  conference
• Feedback 15 mins

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Connextra Story

• Team set up on XP principles in 1999 under the
  guidance of John Nolan and Tim Mackinnon
• Started using Retrospectives after talking to
  RoleModel Software at XP2001
• Retrospectives helped us to improve our process
• Communication both inside and outside the company
• Improved Planning Game, Standup meetings
• Client Support
• Our development environment
• Language, IDE, OS

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What is a Retrospective?

• A meeting where a team looks back on a past
  period of work so that they can learn from their
  experience and apply this learning to future
  projects

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Background

• Pioneered by Norman Kerth, author of Project
  Retrospectives 2000
• Adapted to support XP iterations by agile
  development teams
• Eg RoleModel Soft, Connextra

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What a Retrospective is not ...

• A Retrospective is not a Post-Mortem
• Aim to use Retrospectives regularly during the
  life of the project rather than after
  catastrophic failure
• A Retrospective is not a Witch-Hunt
• Retrospectives are not about apportioning blame

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Why hold a Retrospective?

• To reflect and learn from the past
• To decide how the team will work in the future
• To improve communication within the team
• To allow a team to own and drive their
  development process

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Regular maintenance

• After work period, hold a retrospective
• Reflect on what did and didn't work over the past
  work period
• Make adjustments
• Repeat heartbeat cycle to boost ..
• Communication
• Ownership (intrinsic motivation)
• Effectiveness

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Who should attend?

• Try to represent many viewpoints
• Development
• Marketing
• Customer Support
• QA
• Managers
• May split into specialist groups
• eg Dev only for specialist discussions

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Choosing a Location

• On-site
• Convenient
• Cheaper but may imply unimportant
• Risk of interruptions
• Off-site
• Possibly not practical for regular retrospective
• Room requirements
• Moveable tables/chairs
• Flipcharts

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Choosing a Facilitator

• Use a Facilitator to manage the Retrospective
• Neutral outsider
• Background in software development
• Experienced in mediation and conflict resolution

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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.
• Norman Kerth, 2000

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Negative Packaging

• A message wrapped in a complaint may be worth
  listening to, but the negative packaging can harm
  the learning process
• Retrospective format should use activities which
  try to diffuse the negative nature of complaints
  ...

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Create Safety

• Create an atmosphere in which team members feel
  comfortable talking openly and honestly
• Everything is optional
• Secret ballot
• 5 No problem
• 1 No way
• Establish ground rules

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Ground Rules

• For example
• We will try not to interrupt (use a token)
• We will talk from our own perspective and not
  speak for anyone else
• There will be no jokes at the expense of anyone
  in the room

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Getting the Story Out

• Techniques
• Artifacts Contest item to jog memories
• Develop a Timeline
• Draw Process Maps how we actually work
• Offer Appreciations Tim, I appreciate you for
  ..
• Outputs
• What worked well
• What we should do differently
• Puzzles

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Practical

• Split into groups
• Nominate a facilitator and a scribe
• Mini-retrospective on ADC2003 30 mins
• Agree ground rules to Create Safety
• Get the Story Out
• Artifacts/Timeline/Process Maps/Appreciations
• Present conclusions to session group 5 mins
• What worked well?
• What we should do differently?
• Puzzles?

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Any Questions?

• Do you have any questions about the process and
  practical?

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Feedback

• Groups feedback on how useful they found the
  process

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Reading List

• Project Retrospectives A Handbook for Team
  Reviews by Norman Kerth
• Agile Software Development by Alistair Cockburn
• Adaptation XP Style XP2001 conference paper by
  Chris Collins Roy Miller, RoleModel Software

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Useful Links

• Norm Kerth's site
• http//www.retrospectives.com
• Ward Cunningham's wiki
• http//www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?ExtremeProgrammingRoadm
  ap
• Extreme Tuesday Club, XTC
• http//www.xpdeveloper.com
• Agile Alliance
• http//www.agilealliance.com