#SPRINT RETROSPECTIVE TEMPLATE HOW TO#

Keeping your meetings short and to the point can go a long way to keeping costs down and productivity up. In addition, it can take up to 20 minutes for employees to focus on their work again after an interruption such as a meeting or incoming email. According to a 2014 report, over $25 million is wasted per day on meetings-$37 billion per year. Meetings take time, and time means money. Whatever you discuss in a sprint retrospective, make sure you are inviting participation, documenting suggestions, and voting to determine which actions to take. For example, maybe your team has the problem of going over the 15 minutes scheduled for the daily standup meetings-you can easily fix this by making sure your meetings always start and end on time. The idea is to engage your team by encouraging them to quickly identify where improvements can be made and what actions can be taken to make those improvements. Instead, boil the discussion down to the few questions we listed earlier: You are not going to solve all your problems in one meeting, so don’t try to. What can you do to keep the team from thinking that a sprint retrospective is more than just another meeting? Of course, for some people, one meeting per week is too many. Studies show that a major complaint of the Agile methodology is the perception that there are too many meetings.

#SPRINT RETROSPECTIVE TEMPLATE HOW TO#

How to run a sprint retrospective effectively The team’s progress is carefully measured against the commitments made at the beginning of the sprint, and the customer is given a chance to offer input on the progress made. The sprint review is a two-part meeting in which the Scrum master, the development team, the product owner, and other stakeholders present their progress to the customer. While the purpose of the sprint retrospective is to help teams reflect on the previous sprint in order to improve processes, the sprint review’s purpose is a little different.

Scrum masters should allow for ample time to discuss and collaborate between team members while also making sure that the meeting remains productive. Shorter sprints will likely require less time to dissect (and as we'll mention below, we recommend keeping the meeting as short as you can). Sprints lasting a month usually require no more than a three-hour sprint retrospective. The length of your sprint retrospective meeting may vary slightly based on the length of your sprint and the retrospective technique you employ. How long should a sprint retrospective take? The meeting should provide an environment where the team members feel safe to share honest feedback on what’s going well and what could be improved and to participate in a discussion of what needs to change with clearly defined action items. Who should attend sprint retrospective meetings?Īll members of the Scrum team-Scrum master, product owner, and developers-should attend the retrospective meeting. You can also discuss what commitments your team can make to ensure the next sprint is successful, based on data and observations from your previous sprint. Sandwiching the retrospective between the two, you and your team can most effectively discuss what worked in your previous sprint, as well as what can be improved, while your previous sprint is fresh in your mind. Your sprint retrospective meeting should be held after your sprint review and before the next sprint planning session. When is a sprint retrospective meeting held?

What can we do to improve productivity?.

What should we stop doing in the next sprint?.

What should we start doing in the next sprint?.

What did we do wrong in the previous sprint?.

What did we do right in the previous sprint?.

The meeting is meant to give the Scrum team the opportunity to ask and address questions such as: So what do you discuss in a sprint retrospective? Really anything that affects how the team creates the product is open to scrutiny and discussion, including processes, practices, meetings, environment, and so on. Simply put, the Scrum retrospective meeting lets you analyze your process in the previous sprint and create a plan for improvements in the next. What is covered in a sprint retrospective? This article includes some fun ideas that you can easily incorporate to run your sprint retrospective meeting more effectively and efficiently.

In fact, a good sprint retrospective idea may be to discuss how many meetings the team attends, how long meetings should last, how productive those meetings are, and how you can make meetings more productive. If you’re going to spend a large chunk of your time in meetings, you should always make sure that the meetings you plan-especially one as important as a sprint retrospective-are productive and efficient. If you are a Scrum master or in middle management, it’s possible that you spend up to 50% of your time attending meetings. On average, anywhere from 23% to 37% of your time is spent in meetings.

Sprint retrospective template