🦸‍♀️Sprint Retro Boards

Agile teams reflect on their work and define how to improve their process. Learn more about sprint retrospectives and sprint retro action items below.

Video Version

Coming soon

What are Sprint Retrospectives?

This is the most important part of daily Agile life for a self-organized team.

 Sprint retrospectives are times a team dedicates each sprint to reflect as a self-organized team. They celebrate what they all did together that they really liked, and what they did together that they'd like to change in their process.

 No one can dictate what works or doesn't work. Whatever doesn't work well is only something that the team itself can define through a collective agreement.

As a self-organized team, they need to celebrate the things that they really did well that they want to continue doing. They need to get together every single time that they produce, work, and reflect on all the work that they did.

They re-adjust their working agreements and their team process after each retrospective so that they can self-improve as a team.

Here's an example of what they look like:

A picture of a real retrospective board, taken from the first Tech Fleet project. Credit: Tech Fleet.

Why are Sprint Retrospectives Valuable?

 Sprint retrospectives are valuable because they help a team self-organize by continuously improving on how they work together.

How are Sprint Retrospective Boards Made?

 There are different types of ways that you can perform a sprint retrospective, and each of them have different types of ways to do it.

A popular way to run a sprint retrospective is called the "Four Ls": a team talks about what they liked, what they learned in hindsight, what they lacked, and what they longed for.

There are lots of other types of retrospectives techniques. You can learn about them on Retrium, a tool for teams to run retrospectives:

Retrospective Techniques: Why You Need a Toolbox of Retrospective Techniques | Retriumwww.retrium.com

Credit: https://www.retrium.com/retrospective-techniques

Below you can find a Figjam workshop template for Tech Fleet teams to run the "4 L's" retro workhop.

Who Maintains Sprint Retrospective Boards?

 The scrum master function maintains sprint retrospectives and facilitates the meetings where sprint retrospectives happen.

Sprint Retrospectives Workshop

Here's a Workshop Template your team can use during projects to run a sprint retrospective using the "4 L's" technique: what a team liked, what a team learned in hindsight, what a team lacked, and what a team longed for.

https://www.figma.com/community/file/1475528150900135433www.figma.com

Here's a Figma community template for teams to run a retrospective workshop. Credit: Tech Fleet https://www.figma.com/community/file/1475528150900135433

When Should Teams Run Sprint Retrospectives?

Teams should run retrospectives after every sprint so that they can continue iterating on their team process as a self-organized, continuously improving team.

Taking Action After Sprint Retrospectives

Teams should use retrospectives to take action as well as reflect. After they are finished reflecting, they need to identify ideas for how their process can change, and assign those duties to people on the team together. The workshop template includes a table for this.

Here's an example of what retro action items can look like:

An example of retrospective action items. Credit: Tech Fleet.

Key Components of Building Sprint Retrospectives

1. Sprint retrospectives are visible: They're completely open to everybody on the team.

2. Sprint retrospectives are a safe space: They are a place where people can openly talk about what didn't go well, that they want to improve without being punished or judged for saying so.

How to Run Sprint Retrospectives

Here are the steps:

1. Run the sprint

2. Hold a sprint retrospective workshop

3. Take action items from the retrospective

4. Change your team's working agreements

5. Change your team's process

Head to the Next Lesson