5 Things to Avoid in your Retros

Continuous improvement is one of the main concept of Agile and retrospectives is a technique used by Scrum team to achieve it. This article shares five situations that Scrum teams should avoid in their retrospectives. Author: Edo Williams, RetroTeam, https://retroteam.app/ Sprint retrospectives — done well — are great ways to keep your team on track and productive. They’re a way to take a step back, look at how you’re working and offer ways to work together better in the next sprint. Of course, retrospectives aren’t a place to assign blame or force a confession. Effective retros are about focusing on and openly discussing what went well and how to refine that over and over. One of your jobs as a scrum master is to frame the discussion in good terms that assumes that everyone did their best within the limitations of the sprint. Make sure your discussions focus on the positive aspects and work toward improving your process. Always try to find ways to motivate your team by empowering them to find ways to do their work better. Here are five situations to avoid in your retros and ways to turn them around if they do occur. The Blame Session We’ve all sat through the retro that descends into resentment and finger-pointing. Ideally, scrum masters or other retro facilitators should reign in this kind of toxic discussion. Retros are not blaming sessions. The whole point is to focus on improving working methods and becoming more productive in the next sprints. [...]