Hello there! Today we are going to talk about another scrum concept called a Sprint Retrospective. What is it? How does it work in scrum teams? Why is it useful? And how can we apply it to our own personal productivity? Let's go. What is Sprint Retrospective? The sprint retrospective is a recurring meeting held at the end of a sprint used to discuss what went well during the previous sprint cycle and what can be improved for the next sprint. In short, this is an opportunity to reflect on your previous sprint before jumping into your next one. It is an opportunity to learn from your mistakes as soon as possible so that the team does not keep repeating the same mistakes and experiencing the same issues over and over again. How does the sprint for each respective meeting look like? I'll tell you how it works and the teams that I worked in, but it's pretty much the same across the teams that truly embraced scrum. The product manager or a product owner sets up an online board with three columns, one for each sprint retrospective question. And these questions are, what went well in this sprint, what could be improved and what will we commit to improve in the next sprint. Again, what went well, what could be improved and what will we commit to improve in the next sprint? There are many apps that help you set up these boards. Right now, we are using easy retro.io. You can also use tools such as Miro, Usana, JIRA, a simple Google doc would do too. What I find the most interesting part of the process is that team members submit cards to these columns anonymously. And the anonymity allows the team members to be as honest as possible. And This is the single biggest difference between how a review meeting happens in scrum or agile teams compared to your traditional teams. In traditional teams, you sit in a room, then your manager asks the team how the project went or how the month was. Everyone is kind of shy and scared at the same time. No one talks, everyone pretends as everything went well. Then they leave a meeting, go for a coffee and start gossiping about how terrible the project went. Sounds familiar? Because it wasn't brought up in the meeting and manager's not aware of all these issues, nothing changes. During the next project, the same things happen. Everyone is super frustrated because bad things keep happening, but how would they change if there is no regular, honest feedback happening? In scrum team, even the most insecure, shy and scared person can submit a card and express his or her concerns. And the tools like easy retro.io, not sponsored in any way, if you're just using it at my job, allows you to upvote cars, very similar to how you would afford the comment or post on Reddit. If you have a card that has a lot of uploads , it means that a card needs the most attention or that's the card that the team members agreed the most with. Coming back to the nitty-gritty of a scrum retrospective meeting, how it works is that you can either ask the team members to submit their anonymous cards before the meeting, or give everyone five minutes at the beginning of the meeting to submit the cards. Again, no one sees what you're typing or what you're submitting. So it's very anonymous. Then you ask people to read through other cards and upload the ones they agree with. Some of the tools allow you to merge the cards into some common theme that is also very helpful. Then you sort your cards by upvotes and start discussing each card. I like how the questions are phrased. Again, the questions are what went well, what could be improved and what will we commit to improve in the next sprint? I feel like it's a very collaborative approach. There is no much blame and finger-pointing involved in the process. You quickly realize that it's rarely an individual's fault. It's usually a team dynamic or a lack of communication or clarity that explains some of the delays or errors in any particular project. Then the team decides on how it can be improved going forward. No one feels at fault here. Again, it's the team trying to improve how the team works. This is another thing that is different in scrum and agile, compared to a traditional method. It's the team's job to decide how a certain issue can be addressed. It's not a product manager's job to tell them how to fix it. They decide how they can improve and because they came up with this solution, they are more motivated to commit to it. It's never a top down approach. It's very horizontal. The cards in the column that is titled, what will we commit to improve in the next sprint? Often go to the backlog for the next sprint. Now let's discuss why is it so useful to have this regular sprint retrospective? I am going to share my personal opinion and observations, but you can always find more scientific and data backed findings on the internet. I have experience working in traditional teams and in agile teams, so I can clearly see the difference. These are the four advantages, I think scrum teams have over a traditional teams in regards to using sprint retrospective. Benefit number one, it allows them to regularly review the team dynamic. The key word here is regular. It happens every sprint, not when there is a change in leadership, not when it is a certain day on the calendar, like January 1st or beginning of Q2 because it happens regularly, it becomes normal. What is considered normal as what truly defined the company culture and how things get done. The second benefit I see is that this is the best tool I know so far to deal with the toxic culture. I'm not saying that it is the best tool period. I'm saying it is the best tool I've seen used so far. Traditional teams don't have any tools to deal with the toxic culture in my opinion. The best thing I've seen is some sort of HR performance review once a year, where it's not actually your place to express any concerns. It's more of an opportunity for managers to give you feedback about your performance. HR usually says that there are some policies in place that you can file complaints, et cetera. But how many people do you know who go to HR with complaints about the toxic culture, or some of the regular communication mistakes or lack of clarity on the vision or any of that? No, you go to HR when there's like some seriously bad things happening, but for the day-to-day frustrations, you don't go to HR. At least for me, I don't know anyone who has ever gone to HR to express these more or less minor concerns, but these minor concerns caused the day-to-day frustration and disappointment and overwhelm. Oh, wait. No, there's actually an opportunity to express all your concerns in traditional teams. That's when you quit and have your exit interview. Yeah. That's very ironic in my opinion. The third benefit they see is that everyone is heard. Under traditional teams, the loudest and most confident people are often the ones that are heard. If you are shy or don't feel comfortable talking in public, you rarely get a chance to influence your team's dynamic. You might have the best idea, but it will never get implemented. Scrum employs an anonymous approach, all ideas are heard and evaluated independently of who they were presented by. The final benefit I want to highlight is that with this approach, change happens fast. Remember the last question? What will we commit to improve in the next sprint? It is very proactive. What I often saw happening in the traditional teams is that even if you're lucky enough to have a leader who wants to hear your feedback on a regular basis, it always just ends up being a group therapy session. Everyone is given an opportunity just to speak up, but there are no actionable points drawn from this meeting. Okay, what do we do now? No one knows. So, the same things continue to happen. Under scrum, you can change things starting next spring. It is very fast. Okay, that was a quick or not so quick overview of a sprint retrospective in scrum and agile teams. But now let's see how we can apply it to our personal production. Let's see how you as an individual can have a regular sprint retrospective meeting with yourself as a team of one. Under the monthly method, you do your sprint retrospective on day one of your week four. Our sprints last for three weeks. Then you take a week off. You do this print review on the first day of your week off or on the last day of your sprint. You can simply copy paste the questions from their original scrum guide. Again, the questions are what went well in the sprint, what could be improved and what will we commit to improve in the next sprint? You just answer these questions. I've changed them to stop, start and continue questions. This is what I ask my clients to do. The first question, review your sprint and select one thing you should stop doing to make the next sprint a little bit more productive. Remember, you're looking for incremental changes nothing major or a life changing. Number two, select one thing you should start doing to make the next sprint a little more productive. Number three, select one thing that really helped you during the last sprint and you want to continue doing it during the next sprint. So, one thing to start doing, one thing to stop doing, and one thing to continue doing. Start with just one thing for each of the questions, the more comfortable you become with the sprint planning, the more things you can add under each column. I also have two additional questions in this sprint retrospective form that I give to my clients but they are based on the cognitive behavioural therapy concept. They're very helpful but for other reasons, not the ones that we're covering in today's episode. They don't have anything to do with Scrum. They have something to do with mindset and cognitive behavioural therapy. It's another topic and I'm not going to go deeper into those two other questions, but if you want to have a complete sprint retrospective template with all the questions, download the free PDF guide available on monthlymethod.com/guide. The link will be provided in the show notes. Now, let me give you some examples of what kind of things my clients, or I put in this stop start and continue columns. These are some recent examples of the stop question. One of my clients wanted to stop charging his phone next to his bed because he kept scrolling too late into the night. Another client I wanted to stop seeing more than six clients a day. Another client wanted to stop responding to work emails after 9:00 PM. Here are some examples for the start question. Someone wanted to start going to bed before 11:00 PM. Another client wanted to limit social commitments to two per week. Another one wanted to start reading more and another client wanted to start going to the grocery stores on Sundays so that they have enough groceries for the week. Here are some examples for the "continue" question. A lot of my clients want to continue time-blocking their workdays. Continue using the 10 X coffee practice. Continue to take regular breaks throughout the day. Continue packing lunch the night before. That's my point from my last sprint retrospective. Some of my clients want to continue meditating going to church or temple on Sundays. As you can see here, a lot of them are just lifestyle choices, nothing major. Continue time blocking workdays or stopped seeing more than six clients a day. That's kind of like incremental changes that you can start implementing in your next sprint. We are not talking about running the marathon when you haven't done any running. It's small things that you can start doing immediately. Okay guys, now you have a better understanding of what a sprint retrospective is, how it is used in agile teams and how you can adapt it to your own personal use. Again, if you want to have it all in one nice PDF template that you can just print out and fill out the answers to all of these questions, go to monthly method.com/guide and just download the guide and print it out. You will have all these questions, examples and everything in just one place. Very convenient. Even if you don't do sprint planning as your main productivity system, consider doing a month review at the end of each month. You can book it on your calendar for the last day of the month and go through these three questions. What should they stop doing next month? What should they start doing next month? What worked really well for me during this month, so that they can continue doing it the next month? That's it for today. Please subscribe if you want to have a freshly made episode delivered to you next Monday. Cheers!