{"id":7519,"date":"2016-01-08T11:28:51","date_gmt":"2016-01-08T17:28:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/?p=7519"},"modified":"2022-11-29T13:34:28","modified_gmt":"2022-11-29T19:34:28","slug":"resolutions-and-retrospectives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/resolutions-and-retrospectives\/","title":{"rendered":"Resolutions and Retrospectives"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s that time again \u2013 the New Year, when we look back at the past year and think about what we\u2019d like to change in the coming year, much like retrospectives.<\/h2>\n

This act of looking back happens much more
\nfrequently on Agile projects, since the Team conducts a retrospective at the end of every iteration. The goal is the same though \u2013 to look back at what went well, what didn\u2019t go so well, and what we\u2019d like to change in the upcoming iteration.<\/p>\n

Just as it is challenging to make meaningful New Year\u2019s resolutions that you can actually stick with for any length of time, it can be a challenge to come out of the retrospective with well-defined, actionable items that can affect a real change in the upcoming iteration. For example, a Team that is having trouble meshing as a group might focus on the problem in a retrospective, but not come up with a concrete way to address it. \u201cWe will communicate better\u201d or \u201c we will have more trust in each other\u201d are good goals, but not concrete enough to actually change behavior, especially in the space of a short iteration.<\/p>\n

\"resolutions<\/a>An example of a more concrete goal might be that the team agrees to have lunch with each other 3 times a week. Breaking bread together is a powerful act, and would also give the Team members a chance to get to know each other outside of their working relationship.<\/p>\n

I talked with a team recently that was not good at estimating, so they decided to give it up! Having planning sessions every iteration provides a great opportunity to get better at planning and estimating. Suppose one of the problems identified in a retrospective was that the Team under-estimated the amount of time needed to develop a user story. If they are tracking their tasks daily, and keeping their task estimates updated, they can analyze that data in the retrospective and see what aspects of the story took longer than expected.<\/p>\n

Upcoming Agile & Scrum Courses<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The outcome of the analysis could be one of many things \u2013 the story wasn\u2019t \u201cready<\/a>\u201d to work on, testing or some other activity took longer than expected, etc. Rather than giving up on estimating, the Team could use the results of the analysis in the retrospective to come up with concrete changes to try in the next iteration \u2013 for example, having more information about the story before planning, or adding more time to the testing tasks for each story. At the end of the new iteration, they could see if the changes made their estimates more accurate. Even if the changes didn\u2019t help much, they would have learned something!<\/p>\n

Retrospectives help teams learn together, but only if the Team develops concrete ways to apply that learning to the way they work together. New Year\u2019s resolutions are similar \u2013 if they are too vague (\u201cI\u2019ll work out more\u201d), they are difficult to stick to! So Happy New Year, and here\u2019s to applying what we\u2019ve learned in the past to make this year a great one! And if you are looking for ways to run more effective retrospectives, I highly recommend Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great<\/em> by Esther Derby and Diana Larson.<\/p>\n

\"product<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s that time again \u2013 the New Year, when we look back at the past year and think about what we\u2019d like to change in the coming year, much like retrospectives. This act of looking back happens much more frequently on Agile projects, since the Team conducts a retrospective at the end of every iteration. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":10572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[170],"class_list":["post-7519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-agile","category-user-stories","category-watermark-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7519"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11055,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7519\/revisions\/11055"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7519"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.watermarklearning.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=7519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}