Retrospective smells

Retrospective is the heart of Scrum life cycle. Many Scrum Masters who are new in facilitating Retrospectives find it hard to handle it. Keeping the sensitive nature of this exercise and keeping the emotional aspect in mind, one needs to be really creative, courageous while managing the team doing retrospective.


More info. about the image

George Dinwiddie shares the following retrospective smells.

1. Retrospectives that limit themselves to the three questions, "What worked? What didn't work so well? What are we going to change?"
2. Retrospectives that don't ensure that all the participants are represented. It takes care to get the thoughts and feelings of the introverts.
3. Retrospectives that don't establish safety, or at least acknowledge the level of safety felt by the participants.
4. Retrospectives that are designed to lead to a particular conclusion.
5. It's not a retrospective if you've got "the answer" before you start.
6. It's not a retrospective if the answers come from the leader instead of the participants.

It is very clear that retrospective as a tool can fix things or break things if not done properly. Knowledge and experience of the scrum master plays a key role in facilitating retrospective. Here is a good web resource that has been created by Agilists to share their retrospective experience and in turn help others.