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estimating product backlog product owner sprints user stories
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 2. blog
 3. A Simple Way to Run a Sprint Retrospective




A SIMPLE WAY TO RUN A SPRINT RETROSPECTIVE

by Mike Cohn
82 Comments
Tagged:
 * teams
 * meetings
 * scrum master
 * retrospectives

There are perhaps as many ways to run a retrospective as there are teams to
conduct them. I want to describe my favorite way, especially because it's an
approach that has stood the test of time, having worked for years with many,
many teams.


THE START, STOP AND CONTINUE RETROSPECTIVE

I like to conduct a sprint retrospective by asking team members what they would
start, stop and continue doing. This type of meeting becomes known as a “start,
stop and continue” meeting.

The start items are things a team member thinks the team should add to its
process. Some examples would be:

 * Showing the software to customers early
 * Specifying acceptance tests early and with customers
 * Doing code inspections
 * Being on time for daily standups
 * Finishing one story before starting the next

Items on the stop list are things that someone on the team thinks are
inefficient or are wasting time. The team should stop doing these. Examples from
past retrospectives include:

 * Checking in code without being sure all tests will pass
 * Taking more than 15 minutes for daily scrum meetings
 * Skipping product backlog refinement meetings when we’re feeling behind at the
   end of a sprint

The continue list contains items the team would like to continue to emphasize
but that are not yet habits. So any of the start or stop items above could go
onto the continue list and stay there for a few sprints.

Eventually--once the item became a habit--it would be removed from the continue
list. Otherwise, the continue would become tremendously long.


ASK FOR ITEMS IN DIFFERENT WAYS

A ScrumMaster can ask team members for items in different ways. The easiest is
just to say, “Yell them out,” and team members are free to intersperse start
items with stops and continues. This is my default mode.

But, it can get repetitious sprint after sprint. So, I’ll mix things up and
sometimes I’ll go around the room asking each person to give me one item,
perhaps making two passes around the room before opening it up for additional
items.

Other times, I’ll want to emphasize a specific type of item--often the stops. So
I’ll ask all team members to yell out nothing but things to stop doing. Or, I’ll
combine approaches and go person-by-person around the room asking each to
identify one thing to stop in the team’s current process.

There are plenty of ways to mix up the idea generation in a start-stop-continue
retrospective so that it will take a long time before it gets boring or
repetitious.


VOTE

After enough ideas have been generated, have team members vote for the most
important item or items. It’s often obvious when it’s time to do this because
the creativity has died down and new ideas are not coming very quickly.

The ScrumMaster can have each team member vote for the one, most important idea
or can use any typical multi-voting approach. For example, give each team member
three votes to allocate as they wish (including all three votes to the same
items).

I like multi-voting in a retrospective. The nature of most retrospective items
is that many do not really take time to do it. Many are more behavioral.
Consider being on time for daily standups from the examples above. That doesn’t
take any time. In fact, perhaps it saves time.

Multi-voting would allow a team to choose to work on that behavior and perhaps
another couple of items. Generally, I’d pick no more than three. Even if they
don’t take any (or much) time, choosing too many items does detract from the
importance of those selected.

In addition to voting for new items to pursue, discuss whether items on the
continue list have been achieved, are no longer important or should be otherwise
removed from the list.


THE NEXT RETROSPECTIVE

In the next retrospective, I suggest the ScrumMaster bring the list of ideas
generated at the previous retrospective--both the ideas chosen to be worked on
and those not. These can help jump-start discussion for the next retrospective.

I tend to write them on a large sheet of paper and tape it to the wall without
any fanfare or discussion. The items are just there if the team needs them or
wants to refer to them. I then facilitate a new start, stop, continue
discussion.


BENEFITS OF START, STOP AND CONTINUE

I find that conducting retrospectives this way is fast, easy, non-threatening
and it works. A start, stop and continue meeting is very action-oriented. No
time is spent focused on feelings. We don’t ask team members how they felt
during a sprint; were they happy or sad, warm or fuzzy.

Each item generated will lead directly to a change in behavior. The team will
start doing something, or they will stop doing something, or they will continue
doing something until it becomes a habit.

Yes, I’m prepared for many people to leave comments saying it’s important to
work through people's’ feelings first. Or that we won’t know how to act until
we’ve first dealt with how people feel. Go ahead. In some cases that may be
true. But in plenty of other cases, we can identify what to do (“we need to
start testing sooner”) directly.

And that’s the strength of a start, stop, continue approach to sprint
retrospectives.


WHAT DO YOU THINK?

What do you think? How do you like to run retrospectives? And specifically, is
there anything you’d like to start, stop or continue about your own
retrospectives?



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82 Comments


Posted: January 26, 2016


TAGGED:

 * teams
 * meetings
 * scrum master
 * retrospectives




ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mike Cohn specializes in helping companies adopt and improve their use of agile
processes and techniques to build extremely high-performance teams. He is the
author of User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development, Agile Estimating
and Planning, and Succeeding with Agile as well as the Better User Stories video
course. Mike is a founding member of the Agile Alliance and Scrum Alliance and
can be reached at hello@mountaingoatsoftware.com. If you want to succeed with
agile, you can also have Mike email you a short tip each week.


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