"You got nothing, not a single thing?! Well lets just end this here then."
I remember well when I said this, being very frustrated. About ten years ago I had been working as a Scrum master for a team some months, and putting quite a lot of effort into planning our scrum teams sprint retrospectives. Lot of work also because I felt we were not getting too much out from them; not very good discussions, very few actions, and even the few actions we did come up with did not stick.
And then it happened: a retro where none of the participants came up with anything to say about the sprint. Regardless of the retro topic boxes, reading of books on retrospectives, getting inspiration from tools like retromat.org, having them in different places, using all kinds of different formats and rainbow coloured post-it notes. Not a single thing. Blank.
So then I said the words, out of frustration, mainly to myself. Why couldn't I get this thing everyone is so hyped about to work?
After this one of the team members left behind and started talking with me. He was a bit ashamed himself too - he saw the effort I put in to these and wanted to "do good", but there just were nothing to talk about. Our discussion about having nothing to discuss became quite livid and we then actually came up with several things to try to improve our work life, one of them being to stop the periodic retros for a while. And our work life improved.
Fast forward to this date; I'm in a retro, cameras are off, most people are saying little some not a word. Our usually quite joyful team looks and feels anemic. Value and purpose of team retrospectives has been questioned before, and it is questioned again. Some people are seeking for more effort into facilitation, some people seek to have a retro on the retro - I am thinking we should quit the team-retro-every-two-weeks.
If you're reading this and thinking that sprint retros are awesome and I/we are just doing them or our work wrong, you might be right. I will still offer another angle to why periodical retrospectives may be lame.
1. People cannot remember what they did the previous day, and here we are in a retro trying to think what we did the previous week or event two.
2. If stuff is going well with the team, weeks and days may be quite similar and possibly sometimes even a bit uneventful. Not easy to think what you were glad mad sad about and what to start stop continue.
3. Facilitator pulling all the tricks, may actually just make the team more passive. It is the teams responsibility to improve, expecting someone to hand you everything on a platter is not necessarily a good thing.
4. People don't often discuss and voice opinions in larger groups, especially about the things that matter to them
5. People may actually postpone action or raising of issues, waiting for the "retro", and then forget about the whole thing.
So is there an alternative to this, on top of just not doing them? Well I got some ideas.
- Work together. In pairs, ensembles, work groups, etc. Share your thoughts, ideas, questions and feelings. Take action.
- If you have have an idea or an experience worth sharing, share it immediately! Tell a friend, ask a couple of colleagues to join, chat, propose an action. Done.
- If there is a problem, dissect it asap! Blameless postmortem could do the trick.
- Do a retro immediately after doing something. A retro of the meeting you just did. A retro on the ticket you finished. On the ensemble you just had. Share your results and suggested action. Done.
- Do different things instead of a retro. Try a tool together. Do a hackathon. Play a game. Go for lunch.
- If still you want to have periodic retros, do them every day! While you still remember.
- Improve continuously, not a couple of hours every two weeks.
I for one have been in too many boring retros. You too? Maybe next time the action you propose in your sprint retro could be to stop doing them.
If you still remember this when the retro eventually happens :D
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