Agile Retrospectives, Second Edition

A Practical Guide for Catalyzing Team Learning and Improvement

by Esther Derby, Diana Larsen, David Horowitz

In an uncertain and complex world, learning is more important than ever before. In fact, it can be a competitive advantage. Teams and organizations that learn rapidly deliver greater customer value faster and more reliably. Furthermore, those teams are more engaged, more productive, and more satisfied. The most effective way to enable teams to learn is by holding regular retrospectives. Unfortunately, many teams only get shallow results from their retrospectives. This book is filled with practical advice, techniques, and real-life examples that will take retrospectives to the next level—whether your team is co-located, hybrid, or remote. This book will help team leads, scrum masters, and coaches engage their teams to learn, improve, and deliver greater results.

For nearly two decades, scrum masters, team leads, and coaches have relied on the first edition of Agile Retrospectives as an essential resource to facilitate better retrospectives.

This edition builds on recent research, reflects the authors' experiences over two decades, and shares wisdom gleaned from the global retrospective community. Find practical advice to level up retrospective skills. Address the challenges of remote and hybrid retrospectives head on. Take advantage of expanded guidance on designing and facilitating retrospectives—based on the questions and concerns of practitioners worldwide. Gain insight into choosing a broad or narrow focus for retrospectives. Explore how to use both objective and subjective data to enable more effective conversations. Learn how to make decisions that stick.

Understand the importance of psychological safety and how to foster it in retrospectives. Elevate issues and engage managers in systemic change.

Learn from many real-life stories that demonstrate how our advice has impacted retrospectives at organizations around the globe. Finally, find a set of recommended flows that reveal the authors’ thought process in designing retrospectives for scenarios teams faced in real life.

• Errata, typos, suggestions

Releases:

• P1.0 2024/02/23
• B5.0 2024/02/08
• B4.0 2023/09/15
• B3.0 2023/08/31

• Introduction
• Nuts and Bolts
  • Help Your Team Inspect and Adapt
    • Five Phases of a Retrospective
    • Phase 1: Set the Stage
    • Phase 2: Gather Data
    • Phase 3: Generate Insights
    • Phase 4: Decide What to Do
    • Phase 5: Close the Retrospective
    • Summing Up the Benefits of This Structure
  • A Retrospective Custom Fit to Your Team
    • Design a Retrospective for Your Team’s Needs
    • Consider the Team’s Context
    • Shape the Focus
    • Determine Duration
    • Select a Location and Setting
    • Allocate Time Within the Retrospective
    • Select Activities
    • What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
  • Leading Retrospectives
    • The Facilitator’s Role
    • Manage Activities
    • Manage Time
    • Manage Yourself
    • Just Add People
  • Managing Group Dynamics
    • Create the Conditions for Positive Group Dynamics
    • Handle the Unexpected
    • Remember Your Own Oxygen Mask
• Selecting Activities
  • Activities to Set the Stage
    • Essential Activity
    • Quick Check-In Activities
    • Activities to Support Effective Participation
    • Activities to Build or Reinforce Safety
    • Prepare the Ground for Gathering Data
  • Activities to Gather Data
    • Presenting Objective Data
    • Activities Using Objective Data
    • Presenting Subjective Data
    • Activities Using Subjective Data
    • Presenting Combined Data
    • Activities for Combined Data
    • Shared Data Provides the Foundation for Improvement
  • Activities to Generate Insights
    • Activities to Interpret Data
    • Activities to Seek Insights
    • Activities to Explore Options
    • Creating “Aha” Moments
  • Activities to Decide What to Do
    • Testing for Agreement vs. Voting
    • Evaluating Options
    • First Steps Toward Action
  • Activities to Close the Retrospective
    • Activities to Stimulate Improvement Action
    • Activities to Reflect on Participation
    • Activities to Reflect on the Retrospective
    • Wrapping Up
  • Retrospectives for Common Scenarios
    • New Team Forming, Positive Attitude
    • Retrospective After a Significant Release
    • Poor Feedback from Customers after Delivering a New Feature
    • After an Outage or Issue
    • Time to Deliver Similar Features Is Taking Longer and Longer
    • A Team That Seems to Have Low Psychological Safety
    • An Experienced Team That Doesn’t Feel the Need to Run Retrospectives Anymore (a.k.a “the Devil’s Pom-Poms”)
    • Retrospectives for Advanced Challenges
    • New Team Forming, Issues Loom
    • A Conflict on the Team
    • Elephant in the Room
    • Flows, Not Plans
• Considerations
  • Retrospectives When the Team Is Not Colocated
    • Two Principles
    • Putting the Principles into Practice
    • Asynchronous Retrospectives
    • Hybrid Retrospectives
    • General Guides for Adapting Exercises
    • Whiteboards or Retrospective Tools?
    • Two Final Tips
  • Elevating Issues Beyond the Team’s Control
    • Taking Responsibility
    • Circles and Soup
    • 15% Solutions
    • Radiate Information Out
    • Retrospective Radiators
    • Why Not Just Include Managers?
    • Retrospective of Retrospectives
    • Scaling Frameworks
    • It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way
  • Catalyzing and Sustaining Change
    • Action Items
    • Experiments
    • Picking a Next Step
    • The Change Ambassador
    • Influence Others
    • Change Your Response
    • Learning
    • Visualize Your Improvement Item
    • Monitoring for Results
    • Supporting Larger Changes
    • Make It So
  • Overcoming Objections
    • The Vicious Cycle of Disillusionment
    • Nothing Changes Anyway
    • Retrospectives Are Boring
    • No Difficult Conversations
    • We’re Too Busy
    • We’re Not Agile
    • Retros Only Blame
    • Manager Beliefs
    • Don’t Be Deterred
  • Continuing the Learning Journey
    • Retrospectives in General
    • Facilitation
    • Continuous Improvement
    • Join the Community
    • Continued Learning

Esther Derby draws on four decades of experience leading, observing, and living organizational change. She works with a broad array of organizations. Based on experience and research, her approach blends attention to humans and deep knowledge of complex adaptive systems. Through her writing, workshops and consulting, she has influenced a generation of leaders in the software industry.

Diana Larsen contributes to the foundations and extensions of agile thought as consultant, mentor, and speaker. She has co-authored six books, including LiftOff: Start and Sustain Successful Agile Teams, also published by Pragmatic Bookshelf. Her theme of learning and improvement is central to the practice of cultivating team agility.

David Horowitz is the co-founder and CEO of Retrium, the world’s leading platform for agile retrospectives that is used by thousands of companies across the world. Prior to co-founding Retrium, David spent a decade at The World Bank and International Finance Corporation as a software developer turned agile coach.