Retrospectives are indispensable for continuous learning and improvement. There are some bad practices known as antipatterns that can result in the failure of retrospectives.
We are happy to feature Aino Vonge Corry (Author, Retrospectives Antipatterns) in the recent interview to discuss about what are the retrospective antipatterns, what is the biggest challenge for retrospective when we talk about people and distributed teams, common symptoms to know you are failing at retrospectives and solutions to make the process of retrospectives enjoyable and valuable.
Interviewee: Aino Vonge Corry (Author, Retrospectives Antipatterns)
Aino is Author of the book Retrospectives Antipatterns. After gaining her Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2001 Aino Corry spent the next 10 years failing to choose between being a researcher/teacher in academia, and being a teacher/facilitator in industry. She eventually squared the circle by starting her own company, metadeveloper, which develops developers by teaching CS, teaching how to teach CS, inviting speakers to IT conferences, and facilitating software development in various ways. She has facilitated retrospectives and other meetings for the past 15 years during which time she has made all the mistakes possible in that field. Aino has lived in Stockholm, Lund, and Cambridge, but she is now back in Aarhus, Denmark, where she lives with her family, and a growing collection of plush cephalopods.
Interviewer: Noopur Pathak (Chief Media Editor, INNOVATION ROOTS)
Tag: Retrospective
Heartbeat Retrospective | Glossary
Definition:
An interim retrospective meetings that happens regularly explicitly reflecting the most important events occurred in previous iterative development cycle is called Heartbeat Retrospective. In such meetings, significant decisions are made on further changes and improvements required to achieve the goal. It is a facilitated meeting, generally by Scrum Master and follows a set format.
It is also called ‘Sprint Retrospective’, ‘Iteration Retrospective’, and has gained a favor in Agile community over the past few years.
Benefits:
- Opportunity to identify the bottlenecks to achieve the iteration and overall goal
- Gives direction to further improve
- Encourages ownership and responsibility
Origin:
- Alistair Cockburn has described ‘work in increments, focus after each’ in ‘Surviving Object-Oriented Projects’ in 1997, however he did not name it
- In the year 2001, Alistair Cockburn mentioned ‘Reflection Workshop’ in the book ‘Agile Software Development’
- ‘Agile Manifesto’ published in 2001 mentions significance of regular retrospectives in one of the principles
- Norm Kerth introduced the term ‘Project Retrospectives’ in his book with the same name in 2001
- Esther Derby and Diana Larsen’s book ‘Agile Retrospectives’ brought a closer description of Heartbeat Retrospective.
Further Reading:
- Agile Manifesto
- ‘Agile Retrospectives’ by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen
- ‘Project Retrospectives by Norm Kerth