SPA Conference session: Retrospective Surgery | |||
| One-line description: | A check up for all your rerospective ailments | ||
| Session format: | Workshop (75 mins) [read about the different session types] | ||
| Abstract: | Does your team suffer from a feeling of stagnation, that nothing really changes and motivation is not particularly high? Have you ever wondered why? Do you run regular retrospectives or similar activities to try to break the cycle but still don't feel your making any significant progress? Then this session is for you. Rob Bowley and Matt Wynne sincerely believe that regularly taking time to reflect with your colleagues, identifying your most pressing problems and tackling them is the centre pin of any self-respecting software team. However, even these sessions (usually called retrospectives) quickly become tired and repetitive, often never achieve their intended goals and even get dropped completely (big mistake). Content: This is a lowdown get-your-hands-dirty workshop. Participants will be spending most of their time solving each others problems and trading ideas on how to make the most effective use of your time spent retrospecting within your organisations. Objective: To share our problems with retrospecting activities and find solutions to them. Also to create a directory of tools, tips and tricks which we'll be able to refer to when planning retrospective exercises in the future. | ||
| Audience background: | No particular experience of "agile" retrospectives is necessary and this may be an excellent introduction to the value they can provide. Anyone who is interested in getting the most out of their teams and processes would benefit from attending. | ||
| Benefits of participating: | To be able to discuss and solve your retrospective problems with peers and create a directory of resources which you will later be able to refer to when running retrospectives. For those new to retrospecting, to get a good understanding of the benefits and common pitfalls of retrospectives and to learn how to be able to run them themselves. | ||
| Materials provided: | Post-it notes, index cards, sharpies, flip charts, marker pens, cameras. | ||
| Process: | Participants divided into groups of 5-8 to work on a selection of exercises which will revolve around solving each others problems and bouncing ideas around which could be used in the future, either working in groups or 1 to 1. | ||
| Detailed timetable: | 00:00-00:05 Brief Introduction 00:05-00:15 Work in groups to list retrospective ailments 00:15-00:30 Work in same groups to provide "cures" for other teams ailments 00:30-00:35 Briefly go through ailments 00:35-00:50 Work in pairs interviewing each other in a "solutions focus" style. 00:50-01:05 Discuss and list tools and tricks which can enliven dull retrospectives 01:05-1:15 Go through some of the session output & wrap up However, the timetable is quite flexible depending on how much we get through. | ||
| Outputs: | The output will be organised by the facilitators and stuck on to flipcharts which will be displayed publicly. Later on the content will be transcribed on to http://agileretrospectivewiki.org. | ||
| History: | Run once at BBC Worldwide | ||
| Presenters | |||
| 1. Rob Bowley BBC Worldwide |
2. Matt Wynne Songkick.com Inc. |
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