A Retrospective on Retrospectives Darren Hayes May 2006

1
A Retrospective on RetrospectivesDarren
HayesMay 2006
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What is a Retrospective?

• A Retrospective is a exercise in reflection on a
  past project with the goal of improving
  development processes.

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Importance of Research

• Retrospectives are costly
• Personnel Requirements
• No empirical evidence on impact to development
  process

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Basis for Research

• Survey Data Intel
• Survey Data - Avon

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Surveys

• Do the surveys ask the right questions?
• Over what time period were they taken?
• Who participated?
• Staff turnover
• Trends

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What is Success?

• Improved Communication
• Improved Process
• Superior Product
• Reduction in Errors
• Client Satisfaction
• Lower Costs
• Reduced Maintenance

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Areas of Interest

• CMMI links to Retrospectives
• Correlation between CMM training and
  Retrospectives?
• Differences with Retrospectives for varying size
  and scope of projects

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Retrospective Impact

• Design
• Coding
• Knowledge Share Training
• Repeatable Processes
• System Maintenance
• Customer Satisfaction

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References

• Abdel-Hamid, Tarek, Adapting, Correcting, and
  Perfecting Software Estimates A Maintenance
  Metaphor, IEEE 1993.
• Caputo, Kim, CMM Implementation Guide, Addison
  Wesley, February 2003.
• Glass, Robert, Project Retrospectives, and Why
  They Never Happen, IEEE Software,
  September/October 2002.
• Hazan, Orit, et al, Teaching a Software
  Development Methodology The Case of Extreme
  Programming, Proceedings of the 16th Conference
  on Software Engineering and Training, IEEE
  2003.
• Hodgets, Paul, Refactoring the Development
  Process Experiences with the Incremental
  Adoption of Agile Practices, Proceedings of the
  Agile Development Conference, 2004.
• Kerth, Norm, Project Retrospectives A Handbook
  for Team Reviews, Dorset House Publishing,
  February 2001.
• Ramler, Rudolf, et al, Encouraging
  Self-Organization Reflections on a Quality
  Improvement Workshop, Proceedings of the 2005
  31st EUROMICRO Conference on Software
  Engineering and Advanced Applications, IEEE 2005.