Sprint retrospective is a key element of the agile process - there are 2 aspects - (a) reviewing the progress in terms of what was delivered and what remains outstanding on the backlog, and (b) how can processes be improved. The latter can be achieved by asking these four questions:

1. What went well?

2. What went wrong?

3. What should be preserved?

4. What challenges persist?

This isn't an easy conversation and needs to be carefully chaired as the customer, product owner, developers and project manager are all present and if its been a difficult sprint the conversation is likely to contain some hot topics. Especially so in teams who are running iterations without all the scrum principles applied - i.e. iterations that still allow for change and addition of work part way through. This is my reason for bringing this up - for teams trying to exercise scrum there are some principles and practises that are more challenging to introduce than others. Retrospective seems challenging at this stage in a team's development because of the nasty hot topics that some would rather avoid - but its a lot easier than not permitting change during the sprint.

Recently I went to a retrospective that was very well run with a simple change to approach. The team in question was in the habit of de-prioritising the retrospective. This probably came about because it was a rather dull affair - everyone sitting looking solemn at a projector screen while the project managers read out everyone's feedback and occasionally a subject would be raised that would lead to a 'hot topic' discussion.

So what's this new approach? Simple:

1. Everyone stands up

2. There are 4 spaces on the walls labelled with the 4 questions above

3. Everyone takes a bunch of sticky notes and writes their comments under each label

4. Once done the project managers take the team through each label one at a time

5. Conversation is limited to clarification of the comments - no hot topic discussions now please!

6. Comments are grouped by common thread

7. Each team member scores the comment groups 1, 2 or 3 - 1 being most important

8. The project managers record which are the most important topics and retreat to organise activities to deal with them

It works a treat and actually turns out quite light hearted and doesn't drag on for what seems like forever. Give it a go.