The Power of Retrospection

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The Power of Retrospection

• Linda Rising

• Android programming
• Sang Shin

• The Productive Programmer
• Neal Ford

• Git
• Luca Milanesio

• Introduction to Scala
• Hubert Plociniczak

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Project Retrospectives

• Linda Rising
• www.lindarising.org
• linda_at_lindarising.org

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At regular intervals, the team reflects on how
to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
its behavior accordingly. agilemanifesto.org/pr
inciples.html
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Is that a postmortem?
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Project Retrospectives

• A retrospective is an opportunity for the
  participants to learn how to improve. The focus
  is on learningnot fault-finding.
• Norm Kerth

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Agile Retrospectives

• How to mine the experience of your software
  development team continually throughout the life
  of the project.

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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

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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.

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Why a retrospective? To plan the future

• People want to improve themselves but usually
  they dont know what to work on.
• When they get good feedback on specific goals,
  that releases the natural internal inclination to
  improve. James Fallows

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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.

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Retrospective Examples

• Military 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 Critiques
• chiefmontagna.com/Articles/post20fire20critique
  .htm
• The CEO The Monk corporate funeral

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What a retrospective isnt

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

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Why take so much time?

• Memories are short and selective Challenger
  experiment
• We tend to focus on recent events, especially if
  they are painful
• Technical people see technical problems, while
  many (or most) of the problems we face are people
  problems.
• External facilitation is required

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Appropriate times for a retrospective

• At the end of project
• While the project is still running
• At milestones
• Heartbeat
• Custom response to a surprise

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What are the driving questions?

• What worked well that we dont want to forget?
• What should we do differently?
• What did we learn?
• What still puzzles us?

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Agile vs. End of Project

• On an agile project, each iteration should
  involve a few small experiments
• The 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.

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Who should attend?

• Represent many viewpoints
• Development
• Marketing
• Customer Support
• QA
• Managers
• May split into specialist groups
• e.g. Testers, Developers, to tackle special topics

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What happensDuring the meeting

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

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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

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Create Safety

• Create an atmosphere in which team members feel
  comfortable talking openly and honestly
• Everything is optional
• Secret ballot
• 4 No problem
• 1 No way
• Establish ground rules

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Example Exercises

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

• Artifacts Contest
• Offer Appreciations
• Time Line agile teams do this in real-time
• Mine for Gold

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What happensDuring the meeting

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

• Time Line Exercise

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What happensDuring the meeting

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

• Time Line Exercise

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What happensDuring the meeting

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

• What worked well?
• What to do differently?
• What did we learn?
• What still puzzles us?

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What happensDuring the meeting

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

• Determine actions to take for the next iteration
  or release or project
• Identify the next experiment
• For agile projects, each iteration should
  identify a few small changes and ask the driving
  questions about those changes at the next
  retrospective

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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!

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How to sell retrospectives

• The purpose of a retrospective is learning
• To avoid recurring mistakes
• To identify and share successful practices
• To 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.

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Facilitation resources

• International Association of Facilitators -
  certification program http//www.iaf-world.org/
• ASTD - American Society for Training and
  Development - local chapters http//www.astd.org/i
  ndex_NS6.html
• ISPI - 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 Facilitator
• Sam Kaner et al, Facilitators Guide to
  Participatory Decision Making
• Ingrid 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

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Next Steps

• Buy and read Norm Kerths book Project
  Retrospectives, Dorset House, 2001
• Buy and read Esther Derby and Diana Larsen's
  book Agile Retrospectives, The Pragmatic
  Bookshelf, 2006
• Check out Lindas web site click on Articles,
  then Retrospectives
• Sign up for the Yahoo group retrospectives

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Retrospectivesa closing thoughtfrom 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,
  Im sure we could find better ways to do our
  work. Norm Kerth

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BOF Future of Java EE

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• BOF Web framework shootout
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• BOF Hack your company
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• BOF Those broken, broken class loaders
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