SPA Conference session: Retrospectives exercise in futility or catalyst for change? | |||
| One-line description: | Brainstorming session on the question: "what (if anything) makes retrospectives effective instead of just a waste of time". The output is part of qualitative research for my master thesis | ||
| Session format: | Workshop - 75 minutes [read about the different session types] | ||
| Abstract: | According to a survey conducted at Microsoft (1) 'too many meetings' is considered to be the second biggest problem in agile methodologies (particularly with Scrum) as they are seen to be inefficient, time consuming and often poorly run. And yet, retrospectives are widely propagated as an appropriate mans to increase team productivity, effectivity and efficiency and ,if 'done right', a tool to get teams back to using common sense when organising themselves. I am currently working on research for my master thesis in Computing and Information Technology (MSc) at the University of Northumbria. My vision is to gather as many (war) stories from both sides as possible: - from the enthusiastic members of the agile community, that keep agile alive and kicking and changing for the good - as well as those critical of the agile hype, seeing the problems and the inconsistencies. - And from those of us in between ;-). I want to find out what the current practice of retrospectives is. Do companies do retrospectives? How often? To what avail? (i.e. do they actually change anything?) I want to identify and explore the factors that have an impact on the effectiveness of retrospectives (positively and negatively) and find out what you think is the essence to getting most value out of retrospectives. I believe that one big factor in making retrospectives effective, is how well the participants like them � how well they feel at home in them. So I want to find out, what participants like about retrospectives and what gets on their nerves. And: what qualities they find most important in the moderator. Basically, I want to do a retrospective on retrospectives: describe the actual practice, and find out what works and what could be done better. I want to gather as much data as possible � in order to find out to what extent the common sense tips and ideas that can be found in the numerous books, blogs, talks actually fit reality. To this end I will be using both quantitive (online survey) and qualitative research � this workshop is designed as (hopefully) one of many workshops I will be moderating, in order to gather qualitative research on retrospectives. So I would be really thrilled to have the opportunity of gathering data at Spa 2015! (1) A. Begel and N. Nagappan, �Usage and Perceptions of Agile Software Development in an Industrial context: An Explatory Study, in Emprical Software Engineering and Measurement, 2007. ESEM 2007. First Internation Symposium on, 2007, pp- 255-264. | ||
| Audience background: | no specific skills needed. Previous experience: taken part in one or more retrospectives, post-mortem, reflection meetings | ||
| Benefits of participating: | - Gain insight and greater understanding of what makes retrospectives "tick" - Have a chance to talk about your own experiences and hear whether the others have similar experiences - Take away some ideas, strategies, arguments, moderating games - Have fun - networking - inspiration?! ;-) | ||
| Materials provided: | materials necessary for the brainstorming session | ||
| Process: | In the session we will employ different brainstorming methods to inspect, reflect and discover. At the beginning we will collect overall statistical data on the participants (number, role, etc.) and do a quick dot survey to identify answers to different questions - such as "do you appreciate games in retrospectives?" Then we will divide into groups of 4-6 people. There will then be 3 different brainstorming "subjects" or "games" ( or even retrospective techniques) that will take 20 minutes each. The different groups will work on "different" subjects and activities. For example: - retrospectives from hell (reverse brainstorming and evaluation) Key dangers? Key ingredients for good retrospective? - Build your own retrospective moderator. What one thing would you like to tell moderator? - War stories: Stories from retrospectives: good and bad. What frustrates you about retrospectives? What makes you not participate? When were you inspired by retrospectives? - What problems can a retrospective solve? Which cannot be solved? Which goals can retrospectives actually fulfil? What level of trust needs to be there? Is there any point in looking for improvements when everything is working well? Which most common areas of improvement | ||
| Detailed timetable: | � 00:00 - 00:10 introduction to goals of retrospectives etc. and collecting basic data � 00:10 - 00:30 activity 1 � 00:30 � 00:50 activity 2 � 00:50 � 00:70 activity 3 � 00:70 � 00:75 wrap up / leeway | ||
| Outputs: | posters at the conference pictures of posters, summary of findings to be distributed if wished output of master thesis on the master-thesis webpage (link will be online by the end of February 2015) | ||
| History: | Previous presentation of this session: Play4Agile 2015, Agile Monday, probably other conferences, meetings | ||
| Presenters | |||
| 1. Marina Haase independent |
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