agile retrospectives – Page 2 – Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Mariana Trigo: Icebreakers as boosters for great Agile retrospectives

Looking at how the team executes the process is one of the key aspects that defines the impact and success of the Scrum Master. However, there’s a lot more than process that we should take into account. In this segment, we also discuss the importance of adapting our definition of success to the company we are working with.

Featured Retrospective for the Week: The difference an icebreaker makes

When we start a retrospective, we have the challenge to get the team’s attention and focus. Mariana shares how she found and started using icebreaker activities to both address the team-jelling goal, as well as shape the mood for the retrospectives.

In this segment, we talk about a list of icebreaker activities, which you can get here from the Collaboration Superpower’s website, and we also discuss the use of the Lean Coffee format in the retrospectives.

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About Mariana Trigo

Mariana’s path from Biology to Retail to IT, is a unique path in the search for purpose and the feeling of belonging. Helping development teams to reach their full potential by improving processes and people. Her favorite time is retrospective time, probably connected with her need to constantly get out of her comfort zone.

You can link with Mariana Trigo on LinkedIn.

Tanzil Choudhury: A fresh new look at the Sailboat Agile Retrospective

Tanzil’s definition of success has evolved over time, and revolves around assessing and acting on the idea that companies and teams should be moving “forward” continuously in their Agile journey.

We dive into some of the questions that Tanzil asks to assess if the teams are able to learn and advance in their journey. We also introduce the concept of “cultural hangover”, which Tanzil uses to describe one of the problems he wants to remove in the teams he works with.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: A fresh new look at the Sailboat Retrospective

Tanzil’s retrospective format of choice is the Sailboat retrospective (featured often here on the podcast), but he uses that in a specific way. For Tanzil, the Sailboat retrospective can be a great Futurespective, focusing the team on the future to define their vision. He then uses the Lean Coffee format to discuss the times that come up in the retrospective.

About Tanzil Choudhury

Tanzil is a passionate Agilist focused on coaching individuals, teams and organizations towards the Agile transformation journey. Specialized in working with teams and organizations to help them overcome cultural hangovers.

You can link with Tanzil Choudhury on LinkedIn.

Alex Gbaguidi: Crafting purpose to reach success as an Agile Coach or Scrum Master

Are your teams smiling? That’s one of the questions Alex suggests we ask ourselves. Alex shares some more questions we should go through when evaluating our success as Scrum Masters. However, those tools only help you assess if you need to go back to a core aspect of Scrum and Agile: discussing the purpose of our work.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Lean Coffee, the conversation facilitator

There are many formats we can use with the teams we help. Each team, and each situation may need a different format. However, Alex suggests that there’s a good format to get started with a new team: Lean Coffee.

In this segment, we also refer to the Retrospective Poker Cards, that can help you be inspired to choose your next retrospective format.

About Alex Gbaguidi

Alex is an experienced agile practitioner, coach and trainer with twenty years of experience in IT consulting. He is passionate about helping teams discover the best ways of working adapted to their context. He’s worked in many different types of industries (Telecoms, Energy, Finance or Aeronautics) and provides training on many agile frameworks and practices all around the world in French & English.

You can link with Alex Gbaguidi on LinkedIn and connect with Alex Gbaguidi on Twitter.

You can join Alex Gbaguidi’s Agile Africa community.

Gonçalo Valverde: A list of questions for Scrum Master self-evaluation

What are some of the questions we can ask ourselves to evaluate our work? Gonçalo shares some of the questions he asks himself, and we discuss how critical it is to evaluate the relationship between the team and the Product Owner.

In this segment, we refer to #NoEstimates, a topic we’ve covered before here on the podcast.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The small add-ons that make retrospectives awesome

There are many ways to facilitate great retrospectives. The format of the retro will influence the success of the retro, but so will the small exercises we use for check-in or check-out. In this segment, we introduce shared visual board like Jamboard or Mural, the use of breakout rooms, Liberating Structures, Kudos, the Core Protocols (which have been featured on the podcast before) and small add-ons that make retrospectives awesome for the team!

In this segment, we also refer to the episodes recorded with Dov Tsal.

About Gonçalo Valverde

Gonçalo is an Agile Coach from Portugal working with teams and organizations in their continuous improvement journey. As a keen amateur photographer, he learned that less is more and how constraints help one focus on the outcomes. He’s also a co-organizer of Agile Coach Camp Portugal.

You can link with Gonçalo Valverde on LinkedIn and connect with Gonçalo Valverde on Twitter.

Kim Hinsch: Measure all the things, to assess team and Scrum Master success

Kim likes to use metrics to assess her work and the evolution of the team. This helps the team reflect about their performance, but also about their motivation and engagement (when using team morale metrics, for example). Kim also mentions that your metrics should include a measure of value delivered to the customer.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Simple formats to get started with

As Kim puts it, the best format for the Retrospective is “one that works”. Of course, that means the Scrum Master must pay special attention to what is going on with the team at the time, and learn to read the signs on which method is the most appropriate for the team.

Kim shares with us her process to define what is the format “that works” for every sprint and every team. She also shares a few formats to get you started with a new team: The Agile Battleships (online version of Battleships retrospective) and Name Game Agile Retrospective formats.

About Kim Hinsch

Kim is an agile enthusiast, that has been stung by the power of games, communication, and psychology. Kim practices every day the fine art of making magic happen the agile way. And what makes her heart beat faster is supporting teams and organizations on their magical journey across the hills of excellence and effectiveness.

You can link with Kim Hinsch on LinkedIn.

Priyanka Keswani: Helping teams go from “doing” to “being” Agile

Success for a Scrum Master can mean many things and is also directly affected by the context of the team. In this segment, we talk about one aspect of that success: how good are the team at thinking about their performance outside the simple execution of a process. As Priyanka defines it: helping the team going from “doing” Agile to “being” Agile.

In this segment, we refer to the tool “mood board”.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The Sailboat retro and why it works so well

We start this segment by discussing when, and why, the basic retro formats are useful for teams. Then we move on to discuss why the retrospective is about much more than just process, or how we work and discuss how the Sailboat format helps the teams think outside their usual context of process and tools.

About Priyanka Keswani

Priyanka is a seasoned Agile Coach with a firm belief in innovation, continuous improvement, and a focus on Agile transformation in the organization. With 14+ years of experience, she has worked across various domains- Content Delivery Network, Travel, CRM, and Storage. She started as a QA Manager, then became Scrum Master and Agile Coach. Outside of work, she enjoys listening to music, dancing, traveling, and networking with people.

You can link with Priyanka Keswani on LinkedIn and connect with Priyanka Keswani on Twitter.

Lena Löfdahl: The 6 faces of Jack Sparrow, a fun Agile Retrospective

As Scrum Masters, we must define our own success. That definition will depend on what organizations we are at, and their place in the Agile adoption journey. Lena also shares how important it is for us to learn and move on from what might have been great practices in the past, but end up being inadequate in certain situations.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: The 6 faces of Jack Sparrow, a fun retrospective

The Pirates of the Caribbean retrospective is a metaphor retro that helps the team reflect on their progress through the different phases of Jack Sparrow in the movie “The Pirates of the Caribbean”. As the team discusses the 6 different emotions/faces of the main character. Those create insights about their own work, and what to improve. Find and print 6 different faces of Jack Sparrow from the movie The Pirates of the Caribean, and then ask the team to share their insights according to the emotion in the face. The 6 faces of Jack Sparrow are:

Happy
What the Fudge
Thoughtful
Auch
Mad
Mexican standoff
Makes people laugh and relax

About Lena Löfdahl

Lena is a senior agile coach with a specialty in learning and psychological safety. Successfully coached over 200+ teams and taught courses for 8000+ hours, mostly in agile but also project management. She gets a lot of energy from building teams and colleagues, watching people grow is rewarding work.

You can link with Lena Löfdahl on LinkedIn.

Inderdip Vraich: A practical psychological safety Agile Retrospective

Reflecting on what success means for a Scrum Master is an important reflection activity for anyone interested in improving their impact on the team. Inderdip shares with us the questions that she has developed to keep her own success reflection going despite the hustle of everyday work.

In this segment, we talk about the Scrum Culture Index and mention a Forbes article that helps understand how to measure (“smell”) culture.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Practical Psychological Safety retrospective

As we often talk about psychological safety, it is important to learn how to introduce the concept to the team. In this segment, we explore a possible retrospective format around creating the understanding of and the actions that lead to psychological safety in the team.

About Inderdip Vraich

Inderdip is an Agile Coach and a Scrum Master based in New Zealand. She has been working in the agile space with IT teams since 2007. She believes in lifelong learning and derives deep satisfaction from working with teams & individuals and see them grow in their journey.

You can link with Inderdip Vraich on LinkedIn and connect with Inderdip Vraich on Twitter.

David Wallace: How to know when Scrum teams have taken ownership of their work

We’ve heard many times here on the podcast, that success is about making ourselves obsolete. Allowing for the team to take ownership and leadership in their work. However, that’s easier said than understood! How do we know that we’ve reached that point? We discuss the signs and leading indicators that teams are stepping up and taking ownership of their work!

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Spicying up an old format to keep things fresh

David likes to rely on a simple, and consistent format, and slightly change it to suit the situation. David shares how simple approaches, can help us spice up a familiar format, allowing the Scrum Master to focus on the conversation with the team.

About David Wallace

David Wallace is an agile coach with 25 years of experience in the IT industry. He’s a passionate Agilist and the cohost of the Heart of Agile – Boulder meetup group. He’s currently based in Denver as a Product Delivery Coach at Xero, a New Zealand-based cloud accounting software company.

You can link with David Wallace on LinkedIn and connect with David Wallace on Twitter.

Richard Lizama: Reflecting on the role of the Scrum Master with powerful questions

Scrum Masters do a lot of intangible things. It is not easy to assess the impact of all of those, but Richard shares some tips with us, like running surveys and asking some specific questions that help us reflect on our role.

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: What went well, with a twist

Richard prefers to focus on Retrospective formats that help the team start, and continue a productive conversation. Therefore, he prefers simple formats like the traditional “what went well, not so well and what we want to change. However, Richard adds a twist at the end of this format that helps us grow great teams. Listen in to learn about Richards addition to this traditional format that helps your team grow.

About Richard Lizama

Before becoming a Scrum Master, Richard spent time as a college counselor, then a small business owner, then a tech support rep. Once he found Scrum and Agile, he knew it was where he needed to be.

You can link with Richard Lizama on LinkedIn.