Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives
By Ben Linders and Luís Gonçalves
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About this ebook
Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives helps you and your teams to do retrospectives effectively and efficiently. It's a toolbox with many exercises for facilitating retrospectives, supported with the "what" and "why" of retrospectives, the business value and benefits that they bring, and advice for introducing and improving retrospectives.
If you are a Scrum master, agile coach, project manager, product manager or facilitator then this book helps you to discover and apply new ways to do Valuable Agile Retrospectives with your teams.
With plenty of exercises you can develop your own personal Retrospectives Toolbox to become more proficient in doing retrospectives and get more out of them.
Ben Linders
Ben Linders: Trainer / Coach / Adviser / Author / SpeakerBen Linders is a Independent Consultant in Agile, Lean, Quality and Continuous Improvement, based in The Netherlands. Author of Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives, Waardevolle Agile Retrospectives, What Drives Quality, The Agile Self-assessment Game, and Problem? What problem?. Creator of the Agile Self-assessment Game.As an advisor, coach and trainer he helps organizations by deploying effective software development and management practices. He focuses on continuous improvement, collaboration and communication, and professional development, to deliver business value to customers.Together with Luis Gonçalves I wrote the book Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives which has been translated into many other languages. I'm now working on my 4th book, Problem> What Problem?, about problem-solving using an agile mindset and practices.Ben is an active member of networks on Agile, Lean and Quality, and a well known speaker and author. He shares his experiences in a bilingual blog (Dutch and English), as an editor for Culture and Methods at InfoQ and as an expert in communities like Computable, Quora, DZone, and TechTarget. Follow him on twitter: @BenLinders.In need of training, coaching, advice, consultancy, speaking? Have a question? Contact me!
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Book preview
Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives - Ben Linders
Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives
A Toolbox of Retrospective Exercises
Luis Gonçalves and Ben Linders
This book is for sale at http://leanpub.com/gettingvalueoutofagileretrospectives
This version was published on 2016-03-02
publisher's logo* * * * *
This is a Leanpub book. Leanpub empowers authors and publishers with the Lean Publishing process. Lean Publishing is the act of publishing an in-progress ebook using lightweight tools and many iterations to get reader feedback, pivot until you have the right book and build traction once you do.
* * * * *
© 2013 - 2016 Luis Gonçalves and Ben Linders
ISBN for EPUB version: 978-94-92119-07-0
ISBN for MOBI version: 978-94-92119-07-0
Table of Contents
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
What Is an Agile Retrospective?
Why Do We Do Retrospectives?
Business Value of Agile Retrospectives
Pre-Requirements for Retrospectives
Designing a Retrospective
Retrospective Exercises
Asking Questions
Starfish
Sailboat
One-Word Retrospective
Car Brand
Happiness Index
Five Times Why
Constellation
Team Assessment Survey
Strengths-Based Retrospective
High Performance Tree
Value Stream Mapping
Retrospective of Retrospectives
Benefits of Retrospectives
Adopting Agile Retrospectives
A Retrospectives Book in Your Language
Develop Your Agile Retrospective Facilitation Skills
Valuable Agile Retrospectives
Bibliography
Foreword
I started designing and leading retrospectives nearly two decades ago. I’ve been teaching others to lead retrospectives for at least a decade. I’ve seen how the disciplined practice of retrospectives can help a team. I’ve seen teams improve their practices, boost collaboration, and make better products. Retrospectives can help teams grow into empowerment. They can catalyze the process of change for a whole organization.
I’ve also heard tales of retrospectives that fail to bring change. Sometimes, these failed retrospectives have fallen into a rut. The team repeats the same activities in the same order over and over again. Their habitual practice doesn’t spark creativity or new thinking. Other retrospectives fail because they don’t allow enough time for robust exploration.
Effective retrospectives help teams short-circuit ingrained patterns of thinking. They broaden each team member’s perspective, and help teams think, learn, decide, and act together.
In this book, Luis and Ben share the potential for retrospectives. Their advice comes from practical knowledge. They’ve learned how to prepare an organization for retrospectives and how to introduce them into an organization. They’ve done the work of helping teams choose and make sustainable incremental improvements. They’ve grappled with the pitfalls of teams falling back into habitual thinking.
Ben and Luis offer guidance to help you and your teams make the most of your retrospectives. They have collected activities that will help you and your teams think together and spark discussion.
In this pocket book, teams and retrospective leaders have a new and solid source to keep retrospectives fresh, focused, and full of learning.
Esther Derby
Co-author of Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great
Duluth, MN
November 2013
Preface
We are both active bloggers at www.benlinders.com and lmsgoncalves.com. On our blogs we share our experiences on several agile and lean topics including retrospectives.
Blogging is one way in which we share our knowledge, and it’s a rewarding one. We like the comments we receive on our blogs when people share their own experiences, and we love hearing from people who have tried the things that we write about.
Many readers have told us that they value our blog posts. We started thinking about how we could make things easier for them, by providing a small book on a specific topic - a book that they can carry with them that has hands-on information that they can use in their daily work. These thoughts led us to produce this book about agile retrospectives.
We are aiming this book at agile coaches, Scrum masters, project managers, product managers, and facilitators who have at least some experience with doing retrospectives. They know about the purpose of retrospectives, how they fit into agile, and how to arrange and perform them.
During the years, we have conducted many different kinds of retrospectives. We think that it helps when you develop your own personal toolbox with retrospective exercises. We have given this book a personal touch by including our own experiences which are marked with our initials (BL) or (LG).
We want to thank the many reviewers of our book for investing their time and suggesting improvements: Robert Boyd, Paul van den Broek, Jens Broos, Gerard Chiva, Iñigo Contreras, Hans Dekkers, George Dinwiddie, Stuart Donaldson, Jos Duising, Doralin Duta, Jutta Eckstein, Murrae-Ann Erfmann, Earl Everet, Gerald Fiesser, Don Gray, Linda Halko, Shane Hastie, Joy Kelsey, Gert van de Krol, Cem Kulac, Diana Larsen, Kjell Lauren, Niels Malotaux,