What I've Been Reading Lately

Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great
Derby, Esther and Diana Larsen
The Pragmatic Bookshelf, Raleigh, NC, 2006

One of the key events of an agile development process is the retrospective. This is the point at the end of a sprint or an iteration where the team looks back and what went well and what didn't go so great and decide what to do to make things better.

The first chapters explain the purpose of a retrospective, how to plan them and how to lead them. The authors do this by suggesting the following structure to a retrospective.

1. Set the Stage - get the group ready to talk.
2. Gather Data - discuss milestones and events
3. Generate Insights - talk about what happened. Sometimes the same event is viewed differently by different parties.
4. Decide What to Do - Based on the insights make some choices.
5. Close the Retrospective - Important for ensure energy doesn't dribble away. Decide how to document the experience and follow up.

The majority of the book presents specific activities to gather and process data during the retrospectives. There are several long and short activities for each stage.

I have found this book very useful in planning retrospectives.