Have you heard this one before? I have. Here’s what I ask:
Who’s in the room?
It might not be the right people. The right people are the ones who are doing the work.
There’s an alarming trend where teams think the Product Owner (PO) shouldn’t be invited to Retros. Frankly, this is insane. The PO is part of the team. It says so right in the Scrum Guide.
Who shouldn’t be there? Managers who want to spy on their teams. Anyone who wasn’t actually doing the work within the iteration.
As a Scrum Master, I had people I was mentoring or who wanted to observe Retros to learn more about facilitating them. I always made sure to ask the team first and ensured the observers knew their role was just to observe and that no information was to be shared outside of the Retro. It was only with experienced teams who were running smoothly, and it was a rare occurrence.
How long is your Retro?
Probably not long enough. If you try to fit your Sprint Retrospective into a Review/Retro or (ugh) a Review/Retro/Planning, how’s that working out for you? And how often do you end up skipping the Retro altogether?
I don’t mean that you can’t have your ceremonies all in one day. I worked with a team that did Sprint Review in the morning, had a break for lunch, held their Sprint Retrospective, and then went right into Sprint Planning. These were three distinct events with an hour allotted for each.
Because if you’re trying to fit your Sprint Retrospectives into 30 minutes, that may not be enough time.
When I work with teams whose “Retros aren’t working,” I find that teams with shorter Retros tend to start getting to the good stuff after about 30 minutes. And we have to stop as soon as that happens because our time is over. And we repeat this. Until the team gets frustrated and suggests having a longer Retro. Then we get the space we need.
How’s your Scrum Master doing?
“You know, I’ve been really impressed by the way our Scrum Master has been able to juggle seven different teams. They’re so agile!”
For the love of God, please stop right there. Your poor Scrum Master is being run into the ground. There is no way they have the pulse they need on all of their teams to effectively plan and facilitate a Sprint Retrospective that will be what each team needs in that iteration.
And calling this behavior “agile”… that’s a rant for another day.
Sprint Retrospectives are the time for a good Scrum Master to shine. This is where you put your understanding of the team to use by reflecting back what’s happened in an iteration, challenging the team’s way of thinking, and ensuring you’re using this time to move towards continuous improvement.
You can’t do that with seven teams.
I find it challenging to even do it with three.
Scrum Masters need to be able to focus in order to serve their team(s).
Next week, part two!
As you can probably tell, I’m pretty passionate about Retros.
I’m also passionate about keeping my posts short and digestible.
Next week, we’ll talk more about keeping people engaged in Retros and making sure Retros aren’t just all talk, no action.
Photo by Dmitry Ratushny on Unsplash
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