A friend forwarded this email to me:

I just wanted to share a tip that has made a world of difference for our scrum. I read through this book about 4 months ago

And have implemented some of the practices in it. This has taken our retrospectives from being a 1 hour meeting where we went around the table and said what was good and what wasn’t (and then never really changed anything) to a full 3 hour incredibly productive conversation that the whole team participates in and we actually implement the changes that we propose in! It’s been a complete 180 from a meeting that was a waste of time to something the team looks forward to doing at the end of each sprint.

So if you haven’t read this book, I really recommend you do and try out some of the things in it (even if you think they are a bit cheesy and that the engineers will never tolerate it). It’s a quick read (3 hours tops for the whole book) and will at least give you some ideas for improvement of your retrospectives.

Woohoo! This is the highest praise an author can receive. (I don’t think the activities are cheesy!)

And, for your reading pleasure, two recent articles on retrospectives:

Making Retrospective Changes Stick

Eight Reasons Retrospectives Fail (And What You Can Do About Them)