Agile retrospectives — a complete guide.

More companies are using Agile approaches both in and outside of development processes. The methodology’s iterative design provides value across industries looking for a project management process that can deliver more efficiently and effectively.

Retrospectives are a part of the Agile process often overlooked during fresh implementation. However, they are a vital part of maintaining communication and efficiency. In fact, retrospectives account for 24% higher responsiveness and 42% greater quality compared to Agile teams that skip this step.

This article will explore what an Agile retrospective is, how these meetings can help your existing processes, and how to lead a retrospective successfully.

In this guide:

• What is an Agile retrospective?
• The importance of Agile retrospectives.
• How to conduct an Agile retrospective.
• Types of retrospectives.
• Barriers to success.
• Tips to succeed.
• Get started with Agile today.

An Agile retrospective is a meeting conducted at the end of an iteration of work, typically a sprint. It’s a place for team members to discuss accomplishments and areas for improvement as they plan for the next phase of project work. Team members are encouraged to speak candidly about their experiences and reflect on processes, procedures, and tasks so the broader team can benefit and improve in the long term.

Retrospectives are part of the Scrum framework, making up the fourth and final meeting outlined in the process. Scrum fosters collaboration and communication within and across teams through a series of meetings designed to promote straightforward discussions. They focus on both successes and obstacles to help the team optimize its performance moving forward.

Agile retrospective meetings should focus on the tasks that were completed during the iteration or sprint. The goal is to explore areas for improvement to apply them in the next phase of the project, or to emphasize effective approaches that could benefit other team members. When applied to Scrum, these meetings also bring together contributors across various teams, allowing knowledge sharing in a broader forum.

Teams using Kanban can also find value in conducting retrospectives. While not an official part of the workflow, adding a retrospective can help contributors find ways to be more effective as projects progress.

How is an Agile retrospective different from other meetings?

What differentiates an Agile retrospective from other meetings, such as reviews or postmortems, is their placement in the iterative development or project process. Retrospectives happen at the end of a sprint, or iteration, that is part of a larger project.

The goal is to refine workflows and approaches while the broader initiative is still underway. This allows teams to adapt and become more efficient during work, as opposed to after the entire workload is completed.

Agile retrospective vs. sprint retrospective.

It is important to note there is a difference between an Agile retrospective and a sprint retrospective. While the two terms seem to stand for the same thing, they refer to different stages and processes.

Sprint retrospective is a specific type of agile retrospective that happens at the end of each Scrum sprint, focusing on team process improvement.

Agile retrospective is a general term for any reflection meeting in agile, not limited to Scrum or sprints.

While some may cringe at the idea of adding another meeting to their agenda, Agile retrospectives bring many benefits to the table. For one, they are forums for an exchange of ideas typically not allotted for other project management methodologies.

Retrospectives urge individuals to speak up and share their feedback with a broader audience. This helps to refine processes affecting their workflow and their ability to achieve the goals set for them by management.

While task breakdowns and priorities may come from higher up, contributors are given the floor in an Agile retrospective, allowing leadership to collect input and put changes into practice. This can create even more efficiencies for the people fulfilling the work requests.

This improved communication can lead to efficiencies in other areas not otherwise identified by stakeholders who are not involved in the day-to-day fulfilment of tasks.

Because Agile is iterative — meaning projects are approached in a series of tasks during a set time period — teams can be more flexible as they identify roadblocks along the way. Holding an Agile retrospective at the end of a work interval can surface issues in time for leadership to effect changes before a project is completed.

Further benefits of using Agile retrospectives.

• Alert management of blockers for individual tasks
• Create an inviting space for people to share ideas
• Provide feedback allowing for better leadership
• Rally team members around common goals
• Prioritize people over processes
• Adapt to optimize the next step in the workflow
• Eliminate hierarchy from discussions to increase contributions

Ultimately, implementing an Agile retrospective can provide a better finished product because of the flexibility Agile brings to the development process or workflow in question. In an Agile retrospective, leaders learn about roadblocks or concerns before they become a major stopping point, allowing them to provide direction and constructive feedback while keeping the project on schedule.

Consider the nature of your project work and how often your team moves through different phases of the development or production cycle. Look for stopping points to meet and hold a retrospective based on when teams typically finish an iteration of their work. This could happen at regular intervals, perhaps every 2 to 4 weeks, or it could be flexible depending on the end point of a particular campaign or a rollout.

With the timing ironed out, you’ll want to be sure to invite everyone involved with the project to attend so they can provide feedback and benefit from hearing other team member perspectives. This includes leadership (such as scrum masters and product owners), all individual contributors, and other stakeholders to whom the team’s input could be valuable.

How to approach the retrospective is fairly clear when looking at it from a Scrum framework design. Keep in mind the meeting’s goal is to identify what worked well and what didn’t to find areas for optimization across the teams and processes.

It can help to put the focus on what went well with the iteration first, setting a positive tone for the discussion. From there, ask for feedback on what could be done better or what roadblocks were experienced while working on the tasks at hand. Leaders should keep the conversation focused on a set time period, typically the iteration (or sprint) that just ended.

The Agile retrospective stages.

1. Set the stage. Make it clear to everyone in attendance what you expect (and don’t expect) to occur during the meeting. Encourage everyone to share their perspectives in a respectful way, even when pointing out pitfalls. If you are going to implement a specific type or theme to your retrospective (see below), you can introduce it here.
2. Gather data. Outline or repeat the main tasks or goals from the iteration and ask everyone to comment on their contributions and thoughts. This will set the stage by providing categories to collect insights in.
3. Generate insights. Allow attendees to talk about their experiences and collect their feedback along the way. This can be done through note-taking or more transparent means such as whiteboarding. Group repetitive ideas together to identify themes or areas that may need extra attention.
4. Decide what to do. Define actionable steps addressing what can be done to fix or refine processes for improved outcomes in the next iteration. The group should make decisions together where possible, with leadership turning to stakeholders for broader directional issues. Remember, the goal of a retrospective is to come away with actionable items to improve on existing processes for the next round of work.
5. Close the retrospective. Recap the outcomes of the meeting for everyone and the next steps for people to take, as applicable. Be sure to thank everyone for their contributions and encourage them to remain engaged with the process.

Retrospectives are more than fact-finding missions — they’re collaborative environments where leaders can also turn to individual contributors for creative solutions.

Toward the end of the meeting, you can ask everyone to add their own ideas for how to overcome the presented issues and actions that could or should be taken to resolve challenges. Group common items together and look for trends or themes that can be tackled simultaneously.

While all Agile retrospectives provide a general forum for encouraging and collecting feedback, many different retrospective formats can be applied to team management and workflows.

It can be helpful for leaders to pull from different approaches or adjust their format based on team personalities and needs:

• 4 Ls. This format uses the terms liked, learned, lacked, and longed to break up the discussion and encourage conversation about the iteration in question. This can help put equal emphasis on successes and failures and promote action on both positive and negative outcomes.
• Sailboat. This metaphorical approach likens the project to a boat at sea. Rocks are risks, wind is what went well, anchors stop or slow progress, and land is the objective. This visualization technique is particularly helpful in defining blockers, from complete barriers to items slowing progress.
• Dot voting. This format asks members to place dots next to topics in question as a form of voting. Items with more votes show what should be focused on during the meeting. This process can be great for teams with a large number of topics where prioritization could help.
• Start, stop, continue. Create straightforward categories for tasks to be placed in based on these statuses. This can help define goals and identify missing resources for items not completed during the iteration.
• Question cards. For teams not sure where to start the conversation, question cards can be icebreakers. Leaders create the questions in advance and ask them to spur conversation between attendees, taking note of positive and negative feedback along the way.
• Affinity mapping. Affinity mapping is the process of gathering information about a wide variety of topics, categorizing them into groups, and then prioritizing work based on importance. If your team is looking at a large, complex issue, an affinity map can be a great way to break down the challenge into manageable portions and form action plans to tackle each item.

What all these types have in common is that they endeavor to foster creative and engaging environments for attendees to be active participants in the discussion at hand. Many project managers, scrum masters, and other leaders note one of the biggest obstacles to implementing Agile retrospectives is participation.

Some attendees may feel their input is not valued or there could be repercussions if they talk candidly about processes that did not work. It is up to the meeting facilitator to create a safe and inviting space for everyone to contribute, encouraging engagement, openness, and follow-through.

1. Low engagement.

Your team doesn’t seem that interested. They’re not offering many suggestions, and they’re mostly quiet. To re-engage your team, consider different learning styles. Visual and kinesthetic activities can disrupt usual patterns and encourage creativity.

2. Lack of trust.

The conversation is surface-level, and no one mentions anything negative. To counter this, the facilitator should foster a space where everyone feels comfortable sharing their thoughts. Reward participation even — or especially — when it raises an issue. Encourage the team to air and address problems early on to prevent them from becoming bigger. Ask for individual, confidential feedback to discover any larger issues.

3. Poor follow-through.

Low engagement and lack of trust can also happen when participation doesn’t seem to make a difference. After a while, people stop speaking up. To avoid this problem, validate and take action on the issues raised and the ideas offered. Make sure changes happen in the next sprint, or create actionable goals and keep everyone updated on progress.

1. Ask team members to come prepared.

Clarify how much to prepare and in what format. For example, ask participants to write down their thoughts in a shared document. Let them know if you want one or two sentences, a paragraph, some examples, or more. You’ll be more likely to get input from all your team members, including those who don’t like to speak in meetings, when you make alternative sharing options available.

2. Stay on task and respect everyone’s time.

While retrospectives are a great opportunity to dig deeper into issues, there’s always a risk that one person or one issue will dominate the conversation while everyone else checks out. Keep the meeting on topic and on schedule with a clear, time-boxed agenda.

3. Mix it up and try new formats.

The traditional approach is to ask, “What worked, what didn’t, and what will we do next time?” But those are big questions that can be hard to answer in a detailed, helpful way. Encourage more specific and focused conversation by trying a new activity or format. Here are some examples:

• PMI. Team members put events into categories based on whether they’re a plus, a minus, or interesting (PMI).

• Six hats. This format is quite thorough and can take a long time, but it’s good for teams that need deep reflection. It invites everyone to look at work from six different perspectives:

  • Managerial
  • Objective
  • Positive
  • Negative
  • Brainstorming
  • Emotional

• 3 Ls. Similar to the 4 Ls mentioned above, this activity has everyone writing down something they liked, something they learned, and something that was lacking. Use a digital whiteboard or another tool to sort and display answers.

• Affinity mapping. Affinity mapping is the process of gathering information about a wide variety of topics, categorizing them into groups, and then prioritizing work based on importance. If your team is looking at a large, complex issue, an affinity map can be a great way to break down the challenge into manageable chunks and form action plans to tackle each item.

Retrospectives are an important part of any Scrum or Agile project management process because they allow teams to reflect on their successes and roadblocks in a constructive manner.

Leaders can take this feedback and apply changes in real time to help optimize the outcomes for the next iteration and improve overall performance moving forward. These meetings bring teams together in a positive and productive environment, creating a forum for feedback that can carry up to the stakeholders for further consideration.

Through Agile, teams can deliver better products that align with both their customers’ needs and the market.

Agile approaches allow for faster, more efficient project management since team members work on smaller pieces of the puzzle with clearly defined criteria in a set time period. The result is the iterative production of content, products, or services that can hit the market with greater speed, efficiency, and quality.

Agile retrospectives are just one element of a successful project management framework. As leaders implement these meetings, they also often look for tools to support the overall Agile processes they are managing. That’s where Adobe Workfront can help.

Workfront is work management software that supports Agile teams and other project management methodologies. Integrate people and processes across your organization for better collaboration throughout the entire lifecycle of a project. No matter whether you’re using Scrum or Kanban, Agile is easier with Adobe.

Take a product tour or watch our overview video to see how Adobe Workfront can add efficiency and ease to your Agile management processes.