How to effectively conduct the review meeting (Part 1)?

stay Scrum Team , The retrospective meeting may be what everyone is doing , But how can we do a good retrospective meeting ？

One 、 Eliminate misunderstanding

First of all, let's correct the name of the review meeting ：

1. Is a retrospective meeting a post project analysis ？

Although I ask , Everyone will answer no , But our little science popularization will continue . Tradition project management   The system will be improved through post project analysis , However, this does not mean that retrospective meetings are equivalent to post project analysis . What is the difference between the two ？

• Different stages of occurrence ： The retrospective meeting encourages the adoption of Sprint By , So we usually do it in every Sprint At the end of the review meeting ; Post project analysis is carried out after the completion or termination of the project .
• Different concerns ： The review meeting focuses on continuous improvement during the project , It's short cycle feedback ; Post project analysis is to summarize the experience and lessons of the project process , Make improvements in the next project , Long term feedback .
• The output is different ： Reviewing the output of the meeting is the implementation path ; The output of post project analysis is documents .

2. Is a review meeting a review meeting ？

Again , The answer is No . Many people are not used to separating product improvement from process improvement , So we will combine the two .

Sprint The review meeting is for the development team 、 Product owner 、Scrum Master、 Stakeholders provide an opportunity to examine the product and make improvement decisions ; The retrospective meeting is about team and process improvement , It is mainly used to check how the team completes the work 、 Make a decision 、 How members communicate .

3. It has always been the same agenda ？

When we have a retrospective meeting , Don't stick to an established process , Because this process will gradually evolve into a mere formality , The effect of review will be greatly reduced . The organizational form of the review meeting will also be provided below , Don't let team members habitually repeat in the retrospective meeting ！

Two 、 Essential elements of an effective review meeting

1. Don't blame too much

“ No matter what we find 什 Well , We all 理 Understand and truly believe , Considering what they knew at the time 、 Their skills and abilities 力、 Available resources and the situation at hand , Everyone did the best job they could do .” This sentence does not mean that everyone is blameless , In too much blame , We may gradually become concerned about the behavior of one person rather than the behavior of the whole team .

for instance ： In a Sprint in , The team found a Bug. One of the team members is eager to repair and deploy , Although this problem has been solved , But it also produced a new 、更 Big problem . 

under these circumstances , We go too far to investigate his personal reasons , Instead, it is possible to ignore some irregularities in the team , If there is no inspection “ complete ” The definition of 、 Not running unit tests, etc . In this environment , Team members 更 You may feel attacked and 不 It's admitting to solve the initial problem . therefore , they 不 It's impossible to learn anything from criticism , most important of all , They may miss the opportunity to study systemic problems in depth .

3、 ... and 、 Review form

1. Story Oscar retrospective

Draw a box on the whiteboard , Divide user stories into several types in the box ： Best story 、 The most depressing story and the most surprising story . The team will post a post it note at the review meeting Sprint The user story completed in is pasted in the corresponding box . If there are many user stories nominated in each type , Then we can collectively choose the best among these user stories / The most depressing / The most amazing user story .

2. Sailing review meeting

In this review meeting , We were in a small boat that was about to land on the island , In the process , We will encounter many factors that promote and hinder ：

• ship ： The project team ;
• Islands ：Sprint The goal is ;
• Tail wind ： Push our Sprint Factors for smooth progress ;
• ship's anchor ： Hinder us Sprint Implementation factors ;
• Reef ： Identified potential risks .

In this review meeting , Everyone should analyze in this Sprint in , Our downwind 、 What are anchors and reefs , And then in order to avoid reefs 、 Put away the anchor in advance , What efforts and plans should we make .

With these tips , We can try to start a new retrospective meeting , Next we will have more ways to review the meeting , Keep an eye on us ！