
Once the team is on the same page about the data, the next step is to generate insight. In a retrospective, the Gather Data phase may involve listing out all the bugs that came out in the previous two weeks or showing the burndown chart for the previous two weeks. Horowitz explained that this phase is important in a retrospective because when teams skip the process of making sure there’s a shared mental model before trying to fix an issue, they are setting themselves up for failure. Rather than launching into the disagreement about what to cook, during the Gather Data phase, the couple would start by discussing the facts about each meal they ate last week. But it’s possible that the disagreement is really about what they actually ate for dinner last week, simply because they remember differently.


The husband may say last week’s dinner didn’t have enough flavor, while the wife thinks last week’s dinner tasted great, so they disagree about what meal to prepare. A husband and wife may be trying to decide what to cook for dinner the following week. To help illustrate this phase, Horowitz used a simple example outside of work. “It’s very common at work that people remember different things about what occurred,” Horowitz said. In the Gather Data phase of the retrospective, the purpose is to make sure everyone agrees on the common set of facts that will be discussed in the meeting. The prompt can be short and serve as a way to separate the previous tasks from the conversation to come. To do this, you might ask everyone to share one word about their emotions right now or to take some deep breaths together as a team.
Retrospective agile software#
“The idea is if you just take a group of software developers who are doing deep technical work and throw them all the sudden from that mindset into, ‘What’s going well and what’s not going well?’ Of course, there’ll be low engagement because it’s too hard to switch how your brain is operating that fast,” he explained. During this phase, you’d do a brief check-in to get the temperature of the room and get everyone on the same page and mindset so they are better prepared for reflection. To create an effective meeting, it’s important to set the stage.

Horowitz breaks down the process of an effective retrospective into five phases.
Retrospective agile how to#
How To Run an Effective Retrospective Meeting To get the most out of the retrospective, it’s important that the team is on the same page, has a shared mental model, feels encouraged to participate and that there are systems set up to follow through on what’s discussed. It’s a chance for a team to get together and ask what’s going well, what’s not going well and what can be improved moving forward. Via Zoho Projects's Secure Website What Is an Agile Retrospective?Ī retrospective is a stage of the overarching Agile project management framework.
