Agile teams reflect on their work and define how to improve their process. Learn more about sprint retrospectives and sprint retro action items below.
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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.
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:
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.
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
Sprint retrospectives are visible: They're completely open to everybody on the team.
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.
