Personal reflections on retrospectives outcome​

Since I started working in an agile approach, retrospective events seemed to be difficult to facilitate. Often, I had the feeling that I can’t help the teams and that I’m unable to make retrospectives attractive and engaging. I am pretty sure I’m not the only one in this situation, and like many of us, I tried different approaches.

Although I explained many times what the purpose of a retrospective is and what the outcome of this event should be, the team tends to forget. They no longer disclose to each other information needed to establish the next steps for improvement and lifelong learning.

Not because they didn’t want to, but retrospectives were often seen as boring events. Most likely this was due to a lack of diversity and psychological safety. Not everyone was willing to open up and express their opinions and ideas.

Last days, I sat and thought about what happened in the team I am part of in the last two years and a half as a Scrum Master. Did the retrospectives help us or not? What did we do well and what did we miss? Over time, I have often had the feeling that we are not progressing, and not learning from past mistakes. Or that we are running in circles on various topics and action items discussed.

And yet, looking back, I realized that this is not the case. We made significant progress and learned many things, with many ongoing actions that emerged from our retrospectives.

And then? What happened to my problem, you may ask? Most likely my problem lies in personal perception: small improvements, which happened during an iteration, become a habit and you tend to forget that, at one moment, there were proposals for improvements in retrospectives. The big changes, which significantly impact entire processes, delivery methods, ways of working, etc., have a longer implementation time, and more actions to achieve. In this case, the teams and individuals involved are going through a high impact change curve process (Kübler-Ross model — five stages of grief)

Looking back, I realized, despite my initial feeling, that we managed, as a team, to improve a lot by following the ideas and action items discussed in retrospectives. Some concrete examples are:

• We have improved our efficiency by improving our unit and automated test coverage, thus reducing the need to rewrite code
• We have improved team members know-how by adopting pair programming and working to develop their skillset
• We have improved our delivery quality through better requirements management, improved refinements and better communication between business and technical people. We are actually using our agreed definition of done before carrying out a feature into production
• We have improved our delivery capacity through constant improvements in our ways of working. From one big release in several months to smaller monthly releases, thus bringing value to our customers more often

Hmm, it seems that in the end, we didn’t do a bad job, as I initially thought. Including retrospectives, we have improved very much since two years ago. We applied various facilitation techniques. We used various activities to increase people’s involvement. We used specific online tools. We tried different things and took decisions. In short, we diversified and experimented. Because isn’t it? This is what empiricism means.

Empiricism is the act of making decisions based on what is actually experienced. — Sjoerd Nijland

Although we may not always have been aware of it, we managed to constantly improve as a team and as individuals and we intend to continue to do so. The best thing is that we are committed to continuous improvement and learning and that makes us proud.

Progress can be slow and gradual. Continue putting in effort with patience, enthusiasm and faith. — Mata Amritanandamayi