Retrospective

Purpose: The Sprint Retrospective is a soapbox for people to talk about what's working well, what's not working well, and in some cases, what is confusing. It serves as a time to pause in the development (sprint) cycle and reflect on how things went and learn from them. This meeting helps identify steps for specific improvements.

What it's not for:

• technical deep dives
• planning (there is a separate meeting for this)
• nonconstructive complaining
• blame and judgement

Before the Retrospective

• Set up retrospective collaboration tools (like etherpad)
• Make sure velocity metrics are up to date
• Note who will/won't be there

During the Retrospective

• State what meeting is for, share guidelines (e.g. http://www.retrospectives.com/pages/retroPrimeDirective.html)
• Keep unofficial business (who was absent, velocity review) to a minimum (10 minutes rule-of-thumb)
• Review previous action items from the last Retro, determine if each is done
• Ask team to write down what's been working well, what hasn't, what's confusing (5 minute timebox, 1 minute warning)
• Briefly review what worked well, and celebrate!
• Review what didn't work well and what is confusing in order to clarify and give any additional context
  • Keep it brief and clear per item. Time for action items comes later.
• Vote in order to prioritize items: 3 votes each, voting on what didn't work well and what is confusing
• Identify top three items and isolate (WMF teams move them to bottom of etherpad section)
• With the team, identify actions to take to improve the item in question; make action as specific as possible and identify an owner

After the Retrospective

• Move (etherpad) notes to their (wiki) archive
• Distill action items and email them to the team mailing list with link to (wiki) archive notes
• Check in with team about action items if needed