Project Retrospectives

Linda Risingwww.lindarising.orglinda@lindarising.org

@RisingLinda

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how

to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

agilemanifesto.org/principles.html

Is that a postmortem?

Project RetrospectivesA retrospective is an

opportunity for the participants to learn how to improve. The focus is on learning—not fault-finding.

Norm Kerth

Agile RetrospectivesHow to mine the

experience of your software development team continually throughout the life of the project.

The Retrospective Handbook

A guide for Agile Teams by Patrick Kua

Offers practical tips on the mechanics of preparing, facilitating and making the most out of the retrospective practice

leanpub.com/the-retrospective-handbook

Reflect and find a better way

Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now,

bump, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head,

behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the

only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes

he feels that there is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment

and think of it.

A. A. Milne Winnie the Pooh

Why a retrospective? To learn from the past

We want to believe that learning from experience is automatic, but it requires profound skills.

Experience provides data, not knowledge.

Half way through the semester, students participate in a simulation of the development process. They have been learning about managing and participating in the process all semester . They are tested on the concepts and we review these concepts before the simulation. Yet, every time I run the simulation, the students forget almost everything. When we retrospect after it, their response is always the same: Yes, we knew we should do this and that (and not do what we did) but in the heat of the simulation (it's very fast paced) we forgot what we knew.

A similar situation where managers went through a simulation and even after a de-brief made the same mistakes on a second round of the simulation. “The Experience Trap,” K. Sengupta, T.K. Abdel-Hamid, and L.N. Van Wassenhove, HBR, February 2008, 94-101.

Why a retrospective?To reach closure

Research shows that when organizations go through changes, people have feelings and thoughts but no place to express them in the normal course of business. Thus, their experience is carried forward as a heaviness that slows them down and keeps them from moving into the new setting with enthusiasm.

Retrospective ExamplesMilitary: After Action Reviews, Navy Lessons

Learned, Coast Guard Uniform Lessons Learned

“Learning in the Thick of It,” M. Darling, Charles Parry, and Joseph Moore,, July-August 2005. Harvard Business Review

Post-Fire Critiqueschiefmontagna.com/Articles/post%20fire%20crit ique.htm

The CEO & The Monk – corporate funeral

What a retrospective isn’t

No naming, no blaming. But praise is always welcome!

Kerth’s Prime Directive:

Regardless of what we discover, we must understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job he/she could, given what was known at the time, his/her skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.

What do cognitive scientists say?The areas of the brain involved in (prospect)

thinking about the future – insight – occurs during idle time – are the same areas of the brain involved in thinking about what others are thinking.

Right temporoparietal junction RTPJ, one of the areas that’s most different in our brains.

It takes a long time to develop ~age 5.

We need to take time off, let the mind wander, listen to others, take another point of view.

Appropriate times for a retrospective

At the end of project While the project is still running

o At milestoneso Heartbeato Custom – response to a “surprise”

The driving questions What worked well that we don’t want to

forget? What should we do differently? What did we learn? What still puzzles us?

Agile vs. End of Project On an agile project, each iteration should

involve a few small experiments Retrospective questions should focus on the

experiments, e.g. “What worked well about moving the time of our stand-up?”

Agile retrospectives are about getting ready for the next iteration, not about solving all the problems the team has. You may not be able to solve a given problem, but you can always set up a small experiment.

Ground Rules

Examples:Try not to interrupt (use a talking stick)

Speak from your own perspective and not speak for anyone else

No jokes at the expense of anyone in the room

External facilitation is required.

Exercises Artifacts Contest Offer Appreciations Time Line – agile teams do this in “real-time”

•Readying•Look at the past•Prepare for the future

During the meeting

Time Line Exercise

•Readying•Look at the past•Prepare for the future

How to perform an experiment

1 - Ask a question2 - Do background research (we don't always have time but it might save effort)3 - Construct hypothesis (harder than it seems)4 - What data would prove/disprove hypothesis5 - Test hypothesis with experiment & collect data5 - Analyze data & draw conclusions6 - Communicate results - with other teams, write a paper

Advice for experiments Explicit change experiments Timeboxed Unambiguous pass/fail criteria Don't boil the ocean or burn the boats

! Sometimes just calling attention to a

problem will solve it !

How is knowledge shared? Web postings. Team meetings, staff meetings, tech forums. Training courses. Interaction during checkups and

retrospectives. Process feedback and knowledge sharing

operates continuously. Minstrels and story-tellers!

Pre-mortem for a project Imagine project is a massive failure. Each person takes 3 min to write down all the reasons failure

occurred. Each person shares a item on their list. Facilitator records them on

a whiteboard. After each person has shared one item, go around the room, sharing one item each time, until everyone has exhausted their lists.

Use secret ballot to identify top 2 or 3 items of greatest concern, generate ideas for avoiding or minimizing.

Schedule another meeting to tackle the other problems. Take the list out every 3–4 months to resensitize your team to

problems that may be emerging.

How to “sell” retrospectivesThe purpose of a retrospective is learning

avoid recurring mistakes identify and share successful practices prepare for the next iteration and future projects

Everyone says they want to learn, but few take the time to do so.

Fearless Change: Patterns for introducing new ideas, Mary Lynn Manns & Linda Rising, Addison-Wesley, 2005. More Fearless Change, 2015.

Facilitation resourcesInternational Association of Facilitators - certification program

http://www.iaf-world.org/ASTD - American Society for Training and Development - local chapters

http://www.astd.org/index_NS6.htmlISPI - International Society for Performance Improvement - certification,

local chapters http://www.ispi.org/ NASAGA - North American Simulation and Gaming Association

http://www.nasaga.org/Workshops by Thiagi - Freebies http://thiagi.com/Roger Schwartz, The Skilled FacilitatorSam Kaner et al, Facilitators Guide to Participatory Decision MakingIngrid Bens, Facilitate with Ease!  Josey-Bass Inc., 2000.R. Brian Stanfield, ed., The Art of Focused Conversation. ICA Canada,1977.R. Brian Stanfield, ed., The Workshop Book. ICA Canada, 2002. Training and development Yahoo group

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/trdev/Jean Tabaka, Collaboration Explained, Addison-Wesley, 2006

Next Steps Buy & read Norm Kerth’s book: Project Retrospectives,

Dorset House, 2001 Buy & read Esther Derby and Diana Larsen's book:

Agile Retrospectives, The Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2006 Buy & read Patrick Kua’s book: A Guide for Agile

Teams, leanpub.com/the-retrospective-handbook Check out Linda’s web site – click on Articles, then

Retrospectives Sign up for the Yahoo group: retrospectives

A closing thought from Norm Kerth (and Edward Bear)

… we bump our heads in project after project, day after day. If we would only take a moment to stop and think of alternative ways to proceed, I’m sure we could find better ways to do our work.

Norm Kerth