What is Sprint Retrospective Meeting in Scrum?

Along with the sprint review meeting, the sprint retrospective meeting is held at the end of each Sprint. Here comes the picture of ‘Sprint Retrospective’. So, what is Sprint Retrospective? Let’s discuss this. 

According to the Scrum Guide, the sprint retrospective is an “opportunity for the Scrum Team to inspect itself and create a plan for improvements to be enacted during the next Sprint.” During the Sprint Retrospective, the Scrum Master ensures that the event takes place and the attendants understand its importance. Sprint Retrospective is the best opportunity for the Scrum Team to improve all team members to improve the work process, ways to increase product quality by improving or adapting the definition of “Done”. 

During the Sprint Retrospective, the team discusses: 

• What went well in the Sprint? 
• What went wrong in the Sprint? 
• What We had Learn in the Sprint? 
• What should we do differently in the next sprint? 

1. What went well in the Sprint?

The possible questions that can be asked, to understanding the reason behind a success in the iteration by asking ourselves what went well to acknowledge all the good things that have happened. 

• What motivated us to do it? 
• What did we do differently to make it a success? 
• Which training, skill, or knowledge contributed to the difference? 
• Which strong point in you makes it happen? 
• Which strong points of your team that made it happen? 
• What is the team member’s contribution that helped you accomplish it? 
• How did we achieve it? 

2. What went wrong in the Sprint?

These are the questions that the team shouldn’t be asked to analyze the performance rather to gather information and find the way to identify solutions in the upcoming Sprint. 

• How did it go wrong? 
• What did you do that went wrong? 
• How many are responsible for this to go wrong? 
• Where you aware of doing that it will go wrong? 
• Did you understand it wrong and hence implemented wrong? 
• Did you understand right but still it went wrong? 
• What did we do well? 

3. What We had Learn in the Sprint?

What is the learning from this Sprint? These questions are helpful to identify what went right, and what went wrong. It encourages us to look at what we’ve learned about the way we’re working. Some examples might be: 

• How was this sprint executed? 
• Where did it go wrong in this sprint? 
• When did it go wrong? 
• How did it go wrong? 
• Which techniques were useful? 
• Which techniques were not useful? 
• What went in a smooth fashion during this sprint? 
• What did not go smooth during this sprint? 
• What learning during this Sprint can educate us for the upcoming Sprint? 

4. What Should We Do Differently in the Next Sprint? 

This section basically focuses on identifying the possible corrective actions from the past success, failure, and learning. 

• How can the strength of the individual be utilized to resolve the issue? 
• What should be done often to prevent the issue from arising again? 
• Which actions must be implemented immediately for which you have the bandwidth and capability? 
• Identify the 1 thing to be changed and explain how you could change it? 
• What strategies will work to complete the job? 

What actions can a team take? 

• What will you do in the upcoming Sprint to complete this action? 
• How will you do it to make it a success? 
• When will you do it during the Sprint? 
• Do you require help to complete this? 
• What additional support do you require? 
• How will you let me know that you completed it? 
• What will you do next after accomplishing this during the Sprint? 

Why Should You Run A Sprint Retrospective? 

Here are a few of the many benefits of retrospectives: 

• Sprint Retrospective helps the team members to share their valuable feedback. 
• It allows the team to document wins and areas of opportunity. 
• It helps in identifying actionable list of next steps and identifies who’s owning which item. 
• It identifies small, incremental changes that can lead to larger waves of improvement. 
• It allows teams to iterate on their process to amplify results. 
• It allows opinions to be heard. 
• It helps the team mature. 
• It makes each sprint better than the last. 

Length of Sprint Retrospective Meeting 

The thumb rule for the length of a sprint retrospective meeting is that it usually takes no more than 45 minutes per week of sprint duration. The following table illustrates this rule:

Total Sprint Duration	Sprint Retrospective Duration
1 week	45 minutes
2 weeks	90 minutes (1.5 hours)
3 weeks	135 minutes (2.25 hours)
4 weeks	180 minutes (3 hours)

5 Steps for Conducting Sprint Retrospective Meeting

You can follow the below steps: 

1. Set the stage: Set the objectives clearly and give time to the team to move into the right direction 
2. Gather data: Gather data as much as possible 
3. Generate insight 
4. Why did things happen the way they did? Identify patterns; See the big picture 
5. Decide what to do: Pick a few issues to work on and create concrete action plans of how you’ll address them 
6. Close the retrospective – Clarify follow-up; Appreciations; Clear end; How could the retrospectives improve? 

To conclude: 

Sprint Retrospective is the right platform to the team to success and ponder upon. Team members can think on the improvements that can be included in the next Sprint. Sprint Retrospective support the team in sharing of their interests and views, moving the team towards end solution. So, Sprint Retrospective will be the right step or process for Agile team to deliver quality product or service.