The Instant Retrospective

The Instant Retrospective helps agile teams to tackle problems instantly. It’s a useful way to fix critical topics without further delay. The strength of this technique is the strong focus and solution orientated approach! It gives you the chance to fight against problems that prevents the team to perform.

What you can expect to get out of this exercise

Normally at the end of an iteration the team runs their regular retrospective that focuses on the team and the process. The Instant Retrospective is an spontaneously way to create instant improvement! You are able to come to an agreement very fast so that you will get rid of impediments right away without any further delay. This exercise will teach the team to solve problems by themselves without waiting for the upcoming daily stand-up or regular retrospective. The team will learn how to take care about constant dialogue and discussion so that they can help others to achieve the common objective.

When you would use this exercise

You can run this exercise whenever you want - But not as often as you want! In the normal way you would rise problems or improvements in the end of the sprint. But if you think that there is a topic that just cannot wait until the next regular retrospective, call your team instantly!

Evaluate and assess the problem that has to be tackled very well and decide if you could solve it with an instant retrospective within a timeframe of about 30-45 minutes. The Instant Retrospective should be used as an exceptional way on how to find an improvement immediately. It should NOT replace your regular retrospective.

How to do it

One of the most important detail about the Instant Retrospective is the focus on one single topic. Every team member is allowed to raise his voice within a sprint and start the Instant Retrospective. Regardless of who starts the initiative, there must be a very clear understanding why the topic is important. Here is a set of questions you can use for a moderation in order to get your problem solved:

What is the topic?
This retrospective is a One-Topic discussion - One single issue that has to be improved! Therefore it is essential to get everybody on board. Don’t take to long on explaining the problem - Make it short and clear so that you have the full attention and understanding of every team member.

Why is it important?
Get everybody on the same page and make clear why this issue is a problem and why it is important to improve right away. As you have evaluated the topic very well you should have very good arguments why this topic cannot wait until the next regular retrospective. This part is actually quite important because if people understand the purpose of something, they will be much more engaged in finding the right solution.

How can we solve it?
This is the moment where the complete team comes up with potential solutions - The Action Points. Although you might have a solution in mind, don’t push people to accept your personal solution. Give them the chance to find their own way to get the problem fixed - If everybody really understood the problem it’s very likely that they will come up with even better solution.

The second advantage of creating solutions by the team is that it is more likely that they will apply it autonomously afterwards. Otherwise it would be a typical manager situation where they get told to change something on this way and they will just don’t care and not take it serious. In an agile environment, it’s essential for success that every member of the team learn how to interact and collaborate.

Once team members came up with some possible options that could improve the current situation, get sure that everybody in the room agrees on the action point. A facilitator should take care on making the actions points visual in the room. A good way is setting up a Flipchart with all solution orientated items. Afterwards you can hang it up in the room - That makes the topic present and raises awareness afterwards.

An Instant Retrospective should not take too long. Make it time-boxed! Depending on the teams´ size, let them know before you start in which time frame you are planning to solve the issue. This can help you to avoid off-topics. From my experience, 30-45 minutes is an adequate time frame.

In the last step you summarize all the actions points the team came up with.These generated action points are supposed to be applied right afterwards. If there is a point that has to be done by a single person, ask the team who will take care on it.

As you made all points transparent, recheck all items in your next regular retrospective by verifying if the situation improved.

In case you are interested in Agile Retrospectives I am at the moment preparing a 10 DAYS FREE AGILE RETROSPECTIVES PROGRAM. This is a complete self-study program where you will learn anything that you need to become a great Agile Retrospectives facilitator.

I wrote this blog post because when I came up with this idea, I ran the experiment in one of my teams and I’ve seen the power and advantage of this Retrospective. That’s why I wanted to share it with all of you!

What is your opinion? Do you have questions? Please send me feedback! I’d love to hear from you!

PS: Thanks to Luis for allowing me to be a guest author. Visit my blog at www.dkrimmer.de and follow me on twitter: @dkrimmer84

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