There are a lot of different ways how to do a sprint retrospective meeting, below you can find the one that worked the best for me.

Preparation

  • Participants:
    • Scrum master
    • Team members
    • Optional: product owner
  • Whiteboard, flipcharts, pencils, post-its, …
  • Draw a 2×2 square on the whiteboard (see image below)
  • Duration: 2 hours

Moderation

  • Agenda, goal, overview (what is this meeting about?)
  • Describe how to work with sticky notes
    • one information on one sticky note
    • write a maximum of 2 sticky notes, then put it on the wall, go back to your place and continue (this helps others to remind what happened during the sprint)
    • silence
  • Describe the squares on the whiteboard
    • smiley face: things you liked or what went good?
    • frown face: things you disliked or what went bad?
    • flowers: things you appreciate or whom to thank?
    • light bulb: ideas that you have or what can be improved/changed?
  • 5-10 minutes: team members work on the sticky notes (and puts them on the whiteboard)
  • Every team members says a few sentences about their sticky notes
    • questions:
      • smiley face: how can we repeat it?
      • frown face: how can we change it for the future?
      • ideas: can we implement it?
    • In parallel – create the actions
      • add a square on the whiteboard where you write down actions (things that should be changed, improved, repeated and also ideas etc.)
      • What can the team change, what must be changed by someone else?
  • Goal: List of actions that helps the team to grow, list of impediments

Additional information

  • Focus on actions and improvements – that’s the real important outcome of the meeting
  • Support the team in their process, ask creative questions
  • The actions are defined, to do them! If you just write it down, the whole meeting is useless

Scrum retrospective