Advice for two retrospectives in one sprint(without and with product owner)

I have done that !!!!
Many years ago i inherited a team which had lot of issues . The PO and team didn't trust each other.

I had my first retrospective with Product Owner (PO) alone and my second retrospective with team but without PO. Usually followed by a third retro meeting with PO and team . During the first two meetings PO and team talked about the issues they had with each other. I shared the feedback to each other along with my coaching and mentoring. During the third meeting we focused on the product and common issues which we could solve together. The focus was to create trust and transparency.

I have seen this in many other teams also because of many reasons. Team members were not willing to talk about all the issues in front of PO because they don't trust the PO.

In my case after lot of coaching and mentoring both groups agreed to have a common retrospective. Soon we became one of the best teams in our group.

Retrospective is the meeting where everyone come together for the inspection of the previous sprint . This is a very important part of the empirical process. If team members don't trust each other then they will not speak openly. A coach/ScrumMaster will have to talk to the individuals to understand their concerns. Everyone should feel safe to speak in the meeting. Also ensure that no one blames anyone personally. Once you understand the problem you can act on it. you might not be able to make change in one day , It is a gradual process. Once you establish the trust with everyone including the team and PO they will be open to talk about the issues openly. When you reach this state you will end up having only one meeting with everyone. Once the team matures more you will find them talking about issues and take corrective actions as and when it is needed. They wont even wait for retrospective meetings.

Comments

PDCA & SCRUM (or Agile); Why is it important?

The PDCA (Plan DO Check Act) cycle was made popular by Dr. W. Edwards Deming. This is a scientific cyclic process which can be used to improve the process (or product). This is cyclic in nature and usually time boxed. Plan This is the first stage of the process. During this step the team discusses the objectives, the process and the clear conditions of exit (conditions of acceptance). This stage sets the measurable and achievable goals for the team. DO Team works together to achieve the objective set in the planning phase. Team works with the set of agreed process. Check Once the implantation is done team regroups and verifies the output and compares it to the agreed conditions of acceptance decided during the planning phase. The deviation, if any, is noted down. ACT If any deviation in planned tasks is observed during the Check stage, a root cause analysis is conducted. Team brainstorms and identifies the changes required to prevent such deviations in future. Team also

Product Backlog: Should you write everything in user story format?

I like user stories a lot. They help everyone talk the same language and results in a better product. User story alone does not constitute product requirement. User story is supposed to be a place holder for discussion which should happen between the team, Product Owner and the customer. This discussion result in a common understanding which along with the user story content is the product requirement. This format captures the essence of requirement without confusing the readers User Story is only one of the many different ways in which requirements can be represented. This is not mandatory in any Agile “process”. But many have made this mandatory. I have seen many spending countless hours trying to write the requirements in user story format when they could have easily written that in simple one-line sentence in few minutes. I have seen team members refusing to even discuss the requirement until product owner rewrote the requirement in user story format. Once I

Why is potentially shippable product quality important

Agile teams work in iterations. During this period, they are supposed to work on product increments which can be “delivered” at the end of iteration. But how you know that the correct product was delivered? Many teams have different kinds of acceptance criteria and Definition of Done (DoD). But in many cases, this “done” is not the real “done” there might be some testing pending, some integration or review pending or anything else which prevents the actual use of the product increment. Many of these teams will need additional iterations to finish hardening their products. Many teams will implement different types of “gates” or approval steps to move to next stage. The free flow of product will be interrupted. They might end up doing mini waterfall within their agile process. Many don’t even realize this. This results in poor quality and requires additional effort to “harden” the product. Potentially Shippable Product increment The acceptance criteria and DoD should be modified

The Agile School

Search This Blog