Agile Retrospectives Anti-Patterns

During our XP2011 tutorial, Pat and me facilitated a fishbowl, followed by a brainwriting exercise.

Because we needed a subject we could all relate to, we decided to discuss retrospective anti-patterns during the fishbowl.

I recorded each anti-pattern that was mentioned, so we could use them later during the brainwriting exercise.

After the tutorial, Claudia Melo asked me if I could share the results of the brainwriting exercise.  Because it is physically impossible for me to say no to a Brazilian woman, I summarized the results in this blog post.

Each Anti-Pattern has multiple to suggestions to counter it.  Because not all reflect my personal opinion, I have added my own suggestions in blue.

1. People are only whining

• Use questions that focus on “area’s to improve”, not “what went wrong”.
• Focus on concrete things, not general ones.
• Try to look for solutions (action points) instead of looking for reasons.
• Use exercises to find the root cause.
• Ask whiner: “How would you solve it? What can we do about it?”.
• Try to use tracking.
• Future! We!

2. Hurry – Time pressure – Let’s get it over with!

• Try to get senior management support.
• Prioritize important subjects other than just delivery of value.
• Search for quality.
• Focused time-boxed activities like “brainwriting” and “time-boxed fishbowl”.
• Prioritize instead of plan.
• Learn how to say “No” to managers.
• Get an external facilitator or try to coach the internal facilitator.
• Try to schedule retrospective like a normal task, maybe?

3. No preparation

• Reserve time-boxed slot the day before to do the preparation.
• Give responsibility of preparation to each team member.
• Assign responsibilities to each person.
• Make them want to be prepared => they should feel that their opinion is important and problems are being fixed.
• Create a board with the iteration days and ask people to put issues up as soon as they notice them.
• Give the facilitator some time to prepare and offer help.

4. Actions not part of the next sprint

• Include them as a part of a sprint (at least the ones which are most important to the team) no matter what.
• Reserve time-boxed slot of the team to decide what to do with them.
• Make them regular tasks with people responsible for.
• Check if they have been done during the next retrospective.
• They should feel free to solve appropriate actions.
• Put documentation from retrospective on display => create a board and put the issues there as ‘tasks’ (as kanban).

5. Two Person discussion

• Define a time-box to limit these discussions.
• Brutally break discussion: “some other stuff?”
• Use different dynamics.
• Split and join groups
• Small groups work on questions.
• Whole group discusses together.
• in general: more structured activities.
• Work as a group on the two different opinions and work towards a shared solution.

6. Dismiss other people’s ideas

• Make it a rule to suggest improvements when dismissing someone else’s idea.
• Generate ideas without discussing.
• Vote the different ideas of a discussion.
• Repeat the purpose and rules at the beginning of each retrospective.
• Raise it as an issue and work as a group to gain insight of the consequences.
• Try to find the root cause of the discussion.
• Let them see the consequences of dismissing other people’s ideas by asking questions.

7. Skipping retrospectives

• Do some dynamics to have fun (and useful).
• Ask them what they don’t like about retrospectives, what makes them not wanting to attend.
• Create a group tradition of happy-hour after a (time-boxed) retrospective.
• Make sure the team is empowered to take on the decided actions.
• Do a team building exercise.
• Keep it interesting by introducing new exercises and making sure improvements get follow-up.

8. Not checking results

• Change facilitator.
• Make results visible on charts, etc.
• Assign an owner to each action item.
• Agree with the facilitator to check results in each retrospective.
• Put decided actions in a visible colorful place.

I really enjoyed the workshop and the enthusiasm of all participants!  Like in a good retrospective, it felt like we all contributed and learned from each other.

Tags: Agile, Conferences, facilitating, retrospective, Scrum, Seminars, software development, Teams