ways of working How we Work: Retros and the importance of looking back and being honest by Lauren Beer Posted on 16th December, 2022 Retrospectives – retros, for friends – reveal the importance of being honest and underpin our most precious company value – go for better. In this article, we discuss retros and the role they play in our ways of working. This article is part of the series How we Work: an insider look into how we make ecommerce better. What is a retrospective? A retrospective is a session where the team discusses the sprint or project just finished. We do it to learn from each other about what has gone well, not so well, and how we can perform better next time. Guess what – retros are considered the worst executed technique in Agile, and are often missed. Which is ironic because the main benefit of Agile is the ability to learn constantly. That’s one of the reasons we work in sprints, so that we can keep pausing to check how we are doing, and adjust our path if we need to. And check this out – in 100% of the retros I have ever attended, I learnt something useful we could improve next time 😉 Why do people miss retros? We’ve all done it. We get to the end of the sprint absolutely exhausted and with the next sprint starting next week. Missing the retro might seem like a good way to give the team a well deserved break. Missing the odd retro can be OK – the problem is when retros are missed given systemic issues: If they feel rushed and aren’t properly run (because you’re not used to doing them!), the team are likely to see them as a waste of time and don’t learn anything Missing them to ‘give people time back’ feeds into the flimsy narrative that only time ‘building things’ is valuable, whereas we need to be flying the flag for communication and improvements. How are we ever going to break to cycle of poorly planned sprints if we don’t talk about it? It takes confidence and familiarity to have a good retro. The more we do them, the better the feedback is likely to be. It’s like exercising the feedback muscle. The more you do it, the more powerful the outcome Why do we do them? We do retros, so that we can Learn how to make the project better, one iteration at a time Give everyone a voice, making people feel heard and included Share feedback, including constructive feedback that can be hard to give outside of a formal ceremony “OK, perhaps not having a PM on the project wasn’t such a good idea after all” Tips when running retros From running more retros than we remember, we’ve learned a few tricks. Create a safe space It’s important to create a safe environment where the team feels comfortable sharing their feedback about other team members. The facilitator, often the project manager, will need to make sure the team dynamics are conducive of this type of feedback. It’s also important that people are trained in how to give negative feedback, critiquing behaviours and explaining consequences, rather than critiquing the person. Focus on “better”, rather than spending all the session congratulating each other When teams get on (as they do here), there is a tendency of only focusing on what went well. This is not as useful, and not entirely honest. The facilitator needs to make sure there is limited time for confirming the good things we all know went well, and loads of focus on constructive feedback and ideas for better next time. The “Better” section is the final and most important – what are we going to try next time to solve identified issues? Do them in time. If the retro concerns a sprint, do it towards the end of the sprint, before you plan the next one. This allows you to take what you’ve learnt and apply them to the next set of deliverables.. If it concerns a longer project, do them as soon as the project has finished. Once a new sprint or milestone has started, there is no point going back to the previous phase, as the focus should now be on executing. Plus, it’s amazing how quickly we forget! Generate takeaways and apply learnings. It’s important to allow everyone to talk through their points, even if they seem like duplicates. What seems like small detail might be very important to the person who raised the point, and may require a different outcome. Once all feedback has been shared, the facilitator will encourage the team to think about how we can apply some of the learnings in the next phase or sprint, reassuring the team that they are making tangible progress. “Yes, I will test in staging next time” How to run a retro, GENE style If you want to start using retros, why not try our Miro template These are the instructions: The facilitator should kick off the session by reminding everyone of the period we are looking back at, and what happened in it. The duration of this exercise for teams of 5-10 would be about 45 minutes, so plan for an hour to cover intros, summary and questions. Allocate time for team members to write all their cards, starting with “Good” – what went well, then followed by “Bad”, then “Best”. Once everyone has their cards written (you can write additional ones during the session), they take turns putting one on the wall and explaining it. This process continues until all cards are on the wall. One card per person per turn Once someone is done explaining his or her card, the facilitator asks the room “Does anyone have any comments or thoughts about that?” The facilitator does not edit, comment or summarise the content of the cards Finally, it’s time to think about Better. It’s important to get to this moment with about half of the session left, as this is the most important step. Having discussed Good, Bad and Best helps the quality of ideas for Better. Encourage people to be as explicit as possible so that points can be referred back to easily – cards in the ‘Better’ section are often helpful for setting future sprint goals These instructions probably sound pretty simplistic…and they are, but for a good reason. In agencies, the team members vary greatly in terms of their personal information processing styles. A simple process like this works well to help bridge understanding and absorption across a wide range of disciplines.
