After running a retrospective, there can be a feeling of satisfaction, that the feedback from the team has been captured, the team was engaged and had some great ideas. They were all captured, written down, voted on and actions decided on. But how do you make sure action is taken on the items captured in the retrospective?
These five tips will help you to ensure the items captured in a retrospective are worked on:
- Ensure they are visible to the team
- Give the actions the right priority and an owner
- Talk about the actions in the Daily Scrum or Stand Up
- Implement and measure the success of the change
- Make it a habit for the team to make changes and assess the outcome
Ensure the Retrospective Actions are Visible to the Team
- Write the actions on a large sheet of paper and put it up on the wall in the team area so that everyone in the team can see it.
- Make the action item part of the sprint backlog. Estimate the points to ensure there is time in the sprint to complete the action. If the action item is large, then break it down into smaller pieces. Make sure each of the pieces can be completed in a single sprint.
- Capture all items in Confluence or a shared document. This way you and the team can look back over time and see recurring items and trends. It will also be a nice reference later to see how much the team has developed!
- Make sure you have the support of the Product Owner or Team Leader.
Give the Retrospective Actions the Right Priority and an Owner
For most times “real work”, such as adding new features or fixing bugs in the software will usually be given higher priority than retrospective actions. But nothing will change if you don’t prioritise them. Think of the action items a different way, and try and quantify the benefits of making the changes – how much time will the team save? How much happier will the team be? How will it benefit the customer?
If you’re using Scrum, include the action items in Sprint Planning, and assign an owner to them as well.
Be wary of the temptation to create a separate ‘Improvements’ Backlog, in addition to the Product Backlog. It is hard to compare priorities with two backlogs, and what can happen is that the Improvements Backlog is treated with a lower priority than the Product Backlog, the result being that nothing from the Improvements Backlog is ever worked on. What is key to this is to ensure the improvements are given the appropriate priority.
Talk About the Actions in the Daily Scrum or Stand Up
The team might need help or encouragement as they work on the action. Treat the actions just like any other story in the sprint. Talk about them in the daily scrum or stand up, and get help with blockers. If the team needs tips or more information, then help them find this information. Treat the action as though it were a normal user story.
Measure the Success of the Change
Did implementing the agreed change really improve things? Instead of calling them improvements, call them experiments. Run an experiment and then see if things did improve. Take the learnings from the experiments and use them in future experiments. Even if things did not improve, the team learned something. If things did improve, that is fantastic. Pick another action and run an experiment on that. Either way, trying to make improvements is something to be celebrated by the team. Encourage the team to keep trying and keep experimenting.
Make it a Habit
Making experiments and improvements a habit is the most effective way. There is nothing more frustrating for a team to provide input and for no action to be taken. But if you establish a habit of taking an action item, implementing it, and then doing the same with the next one, the team will get energy from feeling that things are improving and that they have a level of control over the way they work.
From personal experience, there is a boost to morale when the team see that not only can they suggest improvements, but they can also see what happens when they are given the mandate to implement them. The mandate is for the team to devote time and focus on the actions. Conversely, if the team has repeatedly been asked for feedback, but they are repeatedly told there is not time to take action, it can be extremely demoralising.
Photo by Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash
