Retrospective questions, commonly used in Agile/Scrum, are designed to help teams reflect on past performance to improve future work. Key questions include: "What went well?", "What didn't go well?", "What did we learn?", and "What should we do differently next time?". The goal is to generate actionable insights and foster continuous improvement.
Key questions to start
How to run a 4Ls Retrospective
The three questions that should be asked during every agile retrospective are: What went well during the sprint? What didn't go well? What can we do to improve?
What is the golden rule of retrospectives? To create a safe environment where team members can speak openly. It's essential to focus on continuous improvement rather than blame, ensuring that every voice is heard and valued.
Following are some common retrospective mistakes that can be made during a meeting and some tips you can use to effectively avoid them.
Here are 5 icebreaker questions that spark fun conversations: What's your go-to comfort food, what's a skill you'd love to learn instantly, if your life was a movie what genre would it be, what's the best trip you've ever taken, and what's a song that always makes you happy. These questions range from personal preferences to hypothetical scenarios, helping people share a bit about themselves easily.
The 6 steps needed for a successful retrospective are:
The "3-5-3 Scrum" is a simple framework to remember the core elements of Scrum: 3 Roles (Product Owner, Scrum Master, Developers), 5 Events (Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective, and the Sprint itself), and 3 Artifacts (Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, and Increment). It serves as a quick checklist for teams to ensure they're covering the foundational practices for Agile development, promoting transparency, inspection, and adaptation.
Good retrospective is simple
Sure, it's good to have a tool that allows anonymous voting, it's good to have a tool that will email a retro summary to everyone, but it's just a detail, a nuance. What you really need for the retrospective to be successful is to listen, analyze, and act.
An icebreaker is a great way to get your team talking in a fun, easy, and engaging way. It helps everyone feel comfortable and sets a positive tone for your retrospective. This is an optional step. You can set up different types of icebreakers: A random icebreaker based on a category.
The 4Ls stands for Liked, Learned, Lacked and Longed For and was initially developed by Mary Gorman and Ellen Gottesdiener.
Ask team members what they would like to start doing, what they'd like to stop doing, and what they want to continue doing. Those three questions will surface what the team thinks is working well, what isn't working, and potential solutions. You will likely have multiple retrospectives with the same team.
A quick Google search will show you that the 3 daily standup questions in a scrum meeting are:
What Went Well
One of the most common complaints about retrospectives is that people fail to bring up real issues or admit to their problems. If people aren't going, to be honest in a retrospective, the argument goes, they're a waste of time.
Retrospective action item questions
The "4 C's" icebreaker involves asking participants to share a favorite Car, Color, Cartoon Character, and Cuisine that represents them, explaining their choices to build connections and reveal personality through simple, fun prompts, making it great for team bonding.
The most powerful icebreakers currently in service are Russia's Arktika-class (Project 22220) nuclear-powered ships, like the lead vessel Arktika, capable of breaking 13-foot thick ice using twin nuclear reactors. They are the largest and most powerful ever built, featuring a "dual-draft" design for shallow estuaries and deep Arctic waters, significantly strengthening Russia's control over the Northern Sea Route.
Some questions you may want to ask during a sprint retrospective include:
Mad, sad, glad
Unlike many of the other retrospective techniques, this one is focused on how the work made your team feel. Your team will look back and share what made them feel irritated or angry, what made them feel disappointed, and what made them feel happy.
Sprint Retrospective "Stop" Examples
Stop continuing to use an outdated tool that has proven to be inefficient. Stop spending too much time on non-priority tasks that do not directly contribute to project goals. Stop ignoring feedback from team members and stakeholders. Stop adding too many stories into the sprint.