The agile manifesto proposes that a “team reflects on how to become more effective”. Agile retrospectives can be used to inspect and adapt the way of working. But sometimes teams struggle to figure out what an agile retrospective is? And they wonder how they should do them? Retrospectives help teams to deploy agile practices in an effective way and to continuously learn and improve themselves. The retrospective facilitator (often the scrum master) should have a toolbox of retrospective exercises, and be able to pick the most effective one. This presentation explains the “what” and “why” of retrospectives and the business value and benefits that they can bring. You will experience several exercises that you can use to facilitate retrospectives, supported with advice for introducing and improving retrospectives. Retrospectives are a great way for teams to improve their way of working, to become more agile and lean. Getting actions out of a retrospective that are doable, and getting them done helps teams to learn and improve continuously.

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Spice up your Agile Retrospectives with Valuable ExercisesLean Kanban France, November 6, 2014
Ben Linders Advies

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On the agenda today …
•“What” and “why” of Retrospectives
•Facilitating Retrospectives
•Business Value and Benefits
•Workshop: Retrospective Exercises
With agile retrospectives teams drive their own actions! Ben Linders

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Ben Linders Advies
Agile, Lean, Quality & Continuous Improvement
Retrospectives Facilitator, Agile Coach/Mentor
CMMI & People-CMM Assessor
Freelance Editor on Enterprise Agile for InfoQ.com
Who is Ben Linders?
Co-Author Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives
Dutch French Japanese Spanish Italian Chinese
Author: What Drives Quality
eBook: Download from InfoQ or Leanpub
Print: Buy on Amazon or Lulu

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Agile Retrospectives
Practice for teams to reflect on their way of working and to continuously become better in what they do.
Focus upon
•Team
•Self organizing
•Collaboration
•Direct Value
What is an Agile Retrospectives

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Prime Directive
“Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.”

Norm Kerth http://www.retrospectives.com/
Create an Open Culturewhere team member Speak Upwith Respect for each otherto Learn and Improve
Soft Skills Matter

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Why Retrospectives?
To help teams to solve problems and improve themselves!
•Becoming Agile and Lean
•Make existing processes more Agile
•Increase Value of Agile
•Less resistance to Change

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Capable Retrospective Facilitators
Effective and Efficient Retrospectives:
•Vital few improvement actions
•Keep the invested time low
Facilitation by capable people:
•Qualify and Authorize facilitators
•Train: Purpose, techniques, skills Agile Improvement
•Mentoring & coaching
•Share & discuss retrospective experiences

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Do and Evaluate Retrospectives
•Prepare: Purposes and establishing capable facilitators
•Start with retrospectives in your first iteration
•Simple technique: asking questions or boat exercise
Evaluate the Retrospective, ask:
•Is this useful?
•Helps to get a shared understanding how things go?
•Do the actions make sense?
•Does meeting as a team to reflect feel good?

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Business Value
Agile retrospectives help teams learn and improve, and increase their business value to their customers and the company
Getting more Business Value:
•Expectations
•Limit Actions
•Follow up on Actions
Getting Business Value out of Agile Retrospectives

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Expectations for Retrospectives
•Effective Teamwork
•Better Collaboration
•Development Process
•Velocity / Productivity
•Product Quality
•Costs
•Lead Time

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Toolbox of Retrospective Exercises
•Teams are different
•Needs vary in time
•Deliver more value for Teams
You can plan a retrospective meeting, and think about the technique that you want to use, but be open to change it on the spot whenever needed.
Toolbox of Retrospective Techniques

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Retrospective Exercises
•Asking questions
•One-word retrospective
•Root Cause Analysis
•Timeline
•Flow and Energy
•Asking Why?
•Strenghts (Solution Focused)
•Perfection game
•Action priorities
•Retrospective of Retrospectives
•Teams with multiple customers
Book with Agile Retrospective Exercises

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Today’s Exercises
•New Team
•Team Becoming Agile
•Team in Trouble
Roles:
•Facilitator
•Team members
•Observers

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Group Exercise
Timeline:
•5 min: read exercise and divide roles
•20 min: do the retrospective
•5 min: evaluate exercise
Evaluate
•How did it go?
•What did you learn?

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Tirer profit des rétrospectives agiles
Une boîte à outils d'activités de rétrospective
Avec une large panoplie d'activités, Tirer profit des rétrospectives agiles vous aidera à devenir plus efficace dans l'animation de rétrospectives et d'en retirer davantage
Avant-propos d'Esther Derby et Alexandre Boutin.

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Book Discounts
Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives
By Luis Gonçalves & Ben Linders
bit.ly/RetroValue
French: Tirer profit des rétrospectives agiles
40% Discount eBook:
bit.ly/RetroValueFR / bit.ly/RetroValueLKFR
Paperback: €10,-

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Questions?
Ben Linders
Independent Consultant Agile, Lean,
Quality & Continuous Improvement
info@cominfo@BenLinders.com
@BenLinders
www.benlinderswww.linkedin.com/in/benlinders
www.BenLindersAdvieswww.facebook.com/BenLindersAdvies
www.comwww.benlinders.com

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Background Information

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Environment for Retrospectives
Adopting retrospectives is an organizational change where professionals adapt their way of working, their behavior - It won’t just happen, and if not properly supported it may take much time, or even fail.
•Why Retrospectives
•Capable Facilitators
•Do and Evaluate Retrospectives
Adopting Agile Retrospectives

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Purpose of Retrospectives
Help those involved to know why they should do retrospectives
•Teams have authority and responsibility on how to do their work
•The need for continuous improvement
•Celebrate and reward success
•Empasize “why over how”
Sustainable Improvement through Agile Retrospectives

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Leading Retrospectives
Roles
•Facilitator – Servant Leader
•Coach – Support Change
•Manager – Arrange for Change
All roles are needed
Play the game together
Action is in the interaction

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Limit the number of Actions
•Small Action
•Change Frequently
•Focus on Value
•Stop Starting, Start Stopping
•Kanban
Short Cycled Improvement

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Follow up on Actions
•Make them Visible
•Check status in the next Retrospective
•Mentor & Coach teams on Continuous Improvement
Making Quality & Process Improvement Visisble
Uncovering Better Ways to do Process Improvement
Golden Rules for Agile Process Improvement

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Retrospective Benefits
•Actions done by the Team
•Power to the Team
•Changes that Stick

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Examples
The Sprint that failed
•Trust and Empowerment
•Deal with Feelings
The team that wasn’t a team yet
•Getting to know each other
•Skills & Open Culture

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Becoming Agile and Lean
Ask yourself:
•How Agile are you?
•Where do you want to becomemore Agile, and why?
•What can you do next?
Journey to Become Agile and Lean

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Assessing yourself
•Readiness
•Agile / Scrum Practices
•Culture & Mindset
•Agile Fluency
•Roadmaps for Adoption
•Maturity
Agile Self-Assessment

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Agile Process Improvement
Expected benefits:
•Collaboration PI team and stakeholders
•Deploy (over define) processes
•Adopt to changes
•Incrementaly, ROI
•Learn to work Agile
Process Improvement: The Agile Way

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Golden Rules for PI
•Dare to share, Early & frequently
•The result depends on team – Not individuals
•The one who starts something is not necessarily the one to finish it
•The one’s working on a task are the right people
•You may critique anything, but never criticize anyone
Golden Rules for Agile Process Improvement

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Agile using the People CMM
Implementing Agile with the People-CMM

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Resistance to Agile?
•Talk with them
•Listen what they have to say
•Take them seriously
•Ask why and how
Resistance = Information!
Dealing with Resistance

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Articles on Effective Agile
•Self-assessing how Agile you are
•Sustainable Improvement through Agile Retrospectives
•Working in a Sustainable Pace
•Becoming Agile and Lean
•Succes Factors for Using Scrum and Getting Benefits
•Process Improvement: The Agile Way
•Golden Rules for Agile Process Improvement
•How to deal with Resistance when Implementing Agile
•Managing Projects with Agile Teams
•Agile Project Management
•Establishing and Maintaining Stable Teams
•Getting Business Value out of Agile Retrospectives
•Sharing Knowledge is Power
•Are your Professionals Empowered?