The Scrum framework has 5 events; Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Backlog Refinement, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective.
As a Scrum team, Retrospectives (often referred to simply as the retro) are very important as your sprint comes to an end. The retro will happen after the Sprint Review just before you end your Sprint and last 45 minutes (or less), this event will include the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Team Members.
In the Scrum framework Events are created to have your team interact and have fun with their work, this can be performed either in person with a whiteboard or virtually with an online tool such as Miro or funretro.io that all team members have access to. A retro is held at the end of each Sprint. During the Retrospectives, each team member is to answer three questions on a sticky note and stick them in the correct columns.
- What went well?
- What didn’t go well?
- What can you do this sprint to go faster?
There are multiple different ways to set up a retrospective board. Here are few of the templates our team uses to serve as inspiration for your own retros.
A basic Retrospective framework that helps give structure to the conversation during the retro using the questions outlined above.
The car would represent what helped you in your Sprint, the rocks would be what slowed you down, and the road ahead would be what will you do better next Sprint.
The spaceship represents what went well, meteors represent what didn’t go well, and the moon represents what can you do next Sprint to help you go faster.
The wind represents what went well, the anchor is what didn’t go well, and the beach is what you can do better next Sprint.
The bottom line is to be creative with your team!
After all members have placed their sticky notes on the board (in-person or virtually) have your team vote on a Kaizen or an improvement to work on next Sprint. This is the top priority story that you work on as a team to help your team go faster and be happier.
As a pattern of performance for the Scrum framework, you can also add in measuring team happiness. You ask your team members on a scale of 1-5 to rate your teams happiness:
- How happy are you in your role?
- How happy are you with your team?
- How happy are you with the organization?
- What would make you feel happier?
As a Scrum Master making sure your team is happy is a key element in working towards your Sprint Goal. A happy team will radically show in your velocity each Sprint.
For a full event list for your Scrum team download our Scrum Event Checklist here.
Interested in professional development? Our team offers trainings every month! These include 2-hour webinars, half, full, and multi-day sessions, along with a handful of on-demand webinars. We also offer full credential courses including Scrum Master and Product Owner.
Need a custom training for your organization to introduce Scrum or help credential your whole team? We offer private trainings as well. Learn more about the professional development we offer here.
