If you hear about retrospective for the first time, you will wonder why you would do it. What’s so wonderful about scrum retrospective? What aim is behind it? In my opinion, the best answer to these questions can only be to respond to change. As we live in the age of agile business environments – always changing, and always adapting – adapting to change is Inevitable.
What is retrospective? And why we should do it?
A Retrospective is a ceremony held at the end of each sprint. According to the Scrum Guide 2020, The purpose of the Sprint Retrospective is to plan ways to increase quality and effectiveness. Progress and failure and future improvements are discussed during the Scrum Team meeting. You may never realise that what you learned today is going to be helpful tomorrow. All participants are told of the results of retrospective meetings; and in the next sprint, the recommendations are implemented. As George Santayana said,” Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. The retrospective is a perfect ceremony in Scrum to evaluate other things important to the team and crucial to success to benefit from it.
The approach to problem-solving and ultimately providing more value to your clients’ needs a change in the way they work. For this reason, Scrum emphasizes the Retrospective meeting at the end of each sprint to help teams solve problems and improve themselves.
Benefits of retrospective
Unfortunately, most Scrum Masters say they’re simply asking, “What went well? ‘What wasn’t working, right? What can be improved?’. Thinking about the Retrospective meeting, I came up with a list of 5 important benefits:
1-Creates transparency.
The three pillars of Scrum that uphold every implementation of empirical process control are Transparency. Inspection. Adaptation. Transparency in scrum enables scrum team to react quickly.
2-Builds trust.
Everyone wants to know that the work they do has an impact. The best thing to give and receive for seeing the impact of work is feedback. Feedback is the best thing to build trust within a scrum team.
3-Self-reflection
Self-reflection is the key to self-awareness: it allows the scrum team to look neutrally at themselves thoughts, feelings, emotions, and actions.
4-Continuous improvement
By eliminating waste or increasing efficiency, scrum team try on products, processes or services.
5-Help and support
It means that when your part of a team, you have to support when you’re needed. In scrum teams, team members can learn expertise and skills from other team members, helping them develop as a whole and become self-organized.
And that is why I think it is essential to have effective retrospectives.
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