Ben Linders provides a presentation on spicing up agile retrospectives. The presentation covers the purpose and benefits of retrospectives, different retrospective exercises that can be used, and tips for facilitating effective retrospectives. It emphasizes that retrospectives help teams continuously improve their way of working and that effective facilitation is important to get value from retrospectives. The presentation includes examples of retrospective exercises that could be used for different scenarios.

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Ben Linders Consulting
Topconf Linz
March 1, 2017 Ben Linders
Spicing up Agile Retrospectives

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Ben Linders Consulting
Key Takeaways
• “Why” and “what” of Retrospectives
• Retrospective Exercises and Examples
• Facilitating Retrospectives
With agile retrospectives teams drive their own actions!
Ben Linders

3. @BenLinders 3
Ben Linders Consulting
Agile, Lean, Quality & Continuous Improvement
Trainer / Coach / Adviser / Author / Speaker
Recognized Expert on Agile Retrospectives
CMMI & People-CMM Assessor
Freelance Editor for InfoQ.com
Ben Linders
Co-Author Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives
English Dutch French Japanese Spanish Italian Chinese
Russian Polish German Greek Turkish Vietnamese Czech
Author: What Drives Quality & Continuous Improvement
eBook: Download from Amazon, InfoQ or Leanpub
Print: Buy on Amazon or other bookstores

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Ben Linders Consulting
State of Practice
Agile Retrospectives
Doing them?
Like doing them?
Valuable?

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Ben Linders Consulting
Agile Retrospectives
Agile practice for teams to reflect on their way of working
and to continuously become better in what they do.
Focus upon
• Teamworking
• Self organizing
What is an Agile Retrospectives

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Ben Linders Consulting
Purpose of Retrospectives
• With team’s authority comes
responsibility for WoW
• No “first time right”
• Ok to fail, if you learn from it
• Continuous improvement
Sustainable Improvement through Agile Retrospectives

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Ben Linders Consulting

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Ben Linders Consulting
Retrospectives with Kanban
• Fixed cycle / cadence
Every week / 2 weeks, etc
• When needed
Impediment raised / Stand up
stop-the-line
Issue board
 Start from where you are
 Kaizen, small continuous steps

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Ben Linders Consulting
Prime Directive
“Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly
believe that everyone did the best job they could, given
what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the
resources available, and the situation at hand.”

Norm Kerth http://www.retrospectives.com/
Create an Open Culture
where team member Speak Up
with Respect for each other
to Learn and Improve
Prime Directive in 9 Languages Soft Skills Matter

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Ben Linders Consulting
Team Development
Excellent teams:
• are self organized & take responsibility,
• value collaboration & interaction,
• and want learn and improve themselves.
Agile Retrospectives:
 empower teams
 help teams to take action
 enable sustainable improvement

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Ben Linders Consulting
Example: Failed sprint
The Sprint that failed One-Word Exercise:
• Deal with Feelings
• Trust & Respect
• Empowerment

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Ben Linders Consulting
Example: Not able to improve
Team that wasn’t a team yet 5-Times Why exercise
• Getting to know each other
• Collaborate
• Skills to Improve

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Ben Linders Consulting
Retrospective Exercises
• Asking questions
• One-word retrospective
• Root Cause Analysis
• Asking Why?
• Strenghts (Solution Focused)
• Perfection game
• Action priorities
• Retrospective of Retrospectives
• Teams with multiple customers
• Remote Teams
• Futurespectives
• Strengths/Core Qualities
• Self-assessment Game
• Agile journey
• Safety check
• Faces Jack Sparrow

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Ben Linders Consulting
Toolbox of Retrospective Exercises
• Teams differ
• Needs vary
• More value
• Keep it fresh
You can plan a retrospective meeting, and think
about the exercise you want to use, but be open
to change it on the spot whenever needed.
Toolbox of Retrospective Techniques

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Ben Linders Consulting
Capable Retrospective Facilitators
Facilitated by capable professionals:
• Qualified facilitators
• Train: Purpose, techniques, skills
• Mentoring & coaching
• Communities of Practice
Agile Improvement
Effective and Efficient Retrospectives:
 More Impact
 Less time

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Ben Linders Consulting
Do and Evaluate Retrospectives
Start with retrospectives in your first iteration
Simple technique: asking questions or boat exercise
Evaluate the Retrospective:
• Is this useful?
• Helps to get a shared understanding?
• Do the actions make sense?
• Does meeting as a team to reflect feel good?

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Ben Linders Consulting
Vital Few Actions
• Small Actions
• Frequent Change
• Focus on Value
• Stop Starting,
Start Stopping
• Kanban
Short Cycled Improvement Vital Few Actions

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Ben Linders Consulting
Designing your Retrospective
amazon.com/dp/B00SWJO1DI benlinders.com/exercises/

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Ben Linders Consulting
Spicing Up your Retrospective
Valuable Agile Retrospectives:
• Well Facilitated
• Effective Exercises
• Vital Few Actions

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Ben Linders Consulting
Questions?Questions?
Ben Linders
Independent Consultant Agile, Lean,
Quality & Continuous Improvement
info@BenLinders.cominfo@BenLinders.com
@BenLinders
www.linkedin.com/in/benlinderswww.linkedin.com/in/benlinders
www.facebook.com/BenLindersAdvieswww.facebook.com/BenLindersAdvies
www.benlinders.comwww.benlinders.com

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Ben Linders Consulting
Spicing up Retrospectives
Full Day Workshops
 Why and How
 Business Benefits
 Facilitation Skills
 Exercises
Workshop Agile Retrospectives
Spice up your Agile Retrospectives

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Ben Linders Consulting
Getting More out of Agile & Lean
Practices for teams and stakeholders to develop the right products,
deliver faster, increase quality, and create happy high performing
teams.
Full Day Workshops:
Deploying Agile practices effectively
Improve Collaboration
Tips & Trick for Agile & Lean
Improve Continuously
Increase your organization's agility!
BenLinders.com/agilelean

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Ben Linders Consulting
Retrospectives Book
Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives
By Luis Gonçalves & Ben Linders
Download from InfoQ or Leanpub
Buy on Amazon or Lulu
amazon.com/dp/B00SWJO1DI
leanpub.com/gettingvalueoutofagileretrospectives
Mailinglist: eepurl.com/Mem7H

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Ben Linders Consulting
Continuous Improvement
Become aware of importance of continuous
improvement,
Explore how it’s engrained in agile software
development
Suggestions that you can use in your daily work
to improve continuously
Increase your organization's agility!
Leanpub.com/continuousimprovement
“Continuous Improvement is the act of continuously doing whatever helps
to become better and thus more valuable”

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Ben Linders Consulting
Retrospectives Book Bundle
Six successful retrospectives books
• Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives
• Fun Retrospectives
• Fifty Quick Ideas to Improve Your Retrospectives
• The Retrospective Handbook
• Retrospectives for Organizational Change
• The Retrospectives Kickstarter
These books will make your agile retrospectives rock!
Teams will love to do them :-).
leanpub.com/b/agileretrospectives
Discounted price: $30,48 (excl. VAT)

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Ben Linders Consulting
Assessing your Agility
Over 40 tools:
• Self-Assessment checklists
• Readyness checks
• Maturity assessments
• Agile health checks
• Measurements
• And much more!
Agile Self-Assessments

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Ben Linders Consulting
Why Retrospectives?
To help teams to solve problems and improve themselves!
• Becoming Agile and Lean
• Make existing processes more Agile
• Increase Value of Agile
• Less resistance to Change