How to run retrospective using Retrium in 11 steps
Hey friends,
Let's dive into how to run a retrospective as a Business Analyst (especially if you're not from a technical background) with a Software Development team in the agile world.
Understanding Retrospective Basics: Retrospectives are a chance for the scrum team to continuously improve, inspect, adapt, and grow together. No matter what we find, the idea is to believe that everyone did their best in the last sprint. The type and format of retrospectives can vary based on what the team agrees upon. While focusing on inspecting past work, it's equally important to think about the future (futurespective).
How to Run a Retrospective: Now, let's get into the nitty-gritty of running a retrospective, especially if you're stepping into the software development environment for the first time.
As a Business Analyst, you wear three crucial hats when running a retrospective:
Business Analysis Hat: Analyze priorities for the team.
Iteration Manager Hat: Manage the iteration process effectively.
People Skill Hat: Keep the team engaged and working smoothly together.
Key Areas to Focus On: Specifically for running retrospectives, pay attention to the following while wearing these hats: Feel free to explore my Week #8 blog post for more insights.
Analysis Skill: Understand the team's priority areas.
Domain Skill: Grasp the basics of the technical work done by engineers.
Tooling Skill: Learn to use the tools used for retrospectives (we use Retrium at work).
Facilitation Skill: Keep the team engaged during the session.
Team Management: Help organize the 'next step' or 'action plan' for the team.
Note: There's a lot to learn under each area, and you'll pick it up as you go.
Getting Started as a New Business Analyst: If you've recently started as a Business Analyst, attended a few retrospectives, and are now expected to run one yourself, you probably have some questions:
What tool do they use?
What's the format?
Who should attend?
What will we discuss?
How much do I need to understand when engineers and product folks start talking?
Most importantly, how do you even start facilitating the retro?
These are common questions, and that’s exactly what we are going to discuss in the next sections.
Before Retrospective
If you are entirely new to the role or have never run a retrospective before, it is always best to observe how other team members (or other BAs) conduct the session to learn from their experience.
#1 Set up the retrospective board
By default, whether it’s physical or virtual, setting up your board before the meeting should generally include the following columns:
What’s working/ What did we do well?
What’s not working/ What can we improve?
Action items/ Questions/ Sometimes you can also add Kudos in this section.
Tool used: Retrium (There are plenty of options out there, but my team uses Retrium, which is useful for our team dynamic, as we are remotely located across Asia and Australia.
In the Retrium dashboard, you will need to set up the retro room and title it according to the context of the ritual, which usually revolves around the recent sprint. For instance, we tag our retro with a name similar to the recent sprint we've completed, e.g., Sprint Name-Year-Quarter-Sprint Number (Sprint 24-Q1-04).
#2 Check everyone’s attendance before the session
This is important to ensure you know who will turn up and the potential areas that will be discussed. Ideally, all team members involved in the sprint are expected to attend.
Starting Retrospective
#3 Ice-breaker
There are plenty of quick ice-breaker ideas online that you can use with your team. This is crucial to manage and engage the team members' energy before the ritual starts. It's also a way to make the session fun and not boring!
#4 Share the retro room link on Retrium when the meeting starts.
Ensure everyone has the link to access the board; ideally, share it earlier before the session or at the very beginning of the meeting. You don't want to deal with technical issues during the session.
Running Retrospective Meeting
#5 Set the context
Usually, before the retrospective meeting, the team must have attended the sprint review meeting. The context would have been explained there, making it easier for the facilitator/BA to ensure everyone is on the same page regarding the objective of the retro session.
An important part of this is to remind people of the values we are looking for in the retro meeting - a space for openness, listening to each other, and not a place to play the blame game, etc.
This is where you can ensure there’s a psychological safety element within the team. I've been to a retro session that was poorly hosted, without common ground; everyone started shouting, and things went out of context. Think collaboration, always.
Before starting the session, note that there are 5 phases of retro on Retrium:
The following explanations of these phases are my own notes from the experiential learning of how my team members run retrospectives in the last 2-3 sprints:
#6 Think together
Thinking phase
Set the time and inform the team about how much time they have to fill up the board. Ideally, maybe set the timer for 5 minutes to let team members contribute. Allow them to think peacefully; some facilitators even consider adding music to their retro sessions! I love this; it creates a very soothing environment for reflective moments.
Grouping phase
#7 Grouping
This is when you start to share your screen to ensure everyone is viewing the same retro-board.
Once the time's up, take a quick 1-2 minutes to group the notes written on the board. This can ideally be done by the facilitator alone or together with the team. Everyone has access to 'group' the notes together.
Grouping depends on the context and dynamic of the team. For instance, in generic notes can be grouped together according to the work areas as follows (there’s no only one right way to do this; think fun and enable people to understand the pattern of the notes written!):
Group Name: Launch
Group Name: People
Group Name: Technical
Voting phase
#8 Vote
Each person would have about 5 times to vote the notes written across the board. In Retrium, dot voting is used for this purpose.
As a facilitator, you can only move to the next steps in the retro flow when everyone has done their voting.
This is the important time for you to engage with everyone in the meeting, to ensure they are still engaged and being present in the session.
#9 Discuss
Discussing phase
Because retrospectives are done at the end of every sprint, the number of items to be discussed might be fewer compared to retrospectives done farther apart. Start with the highest voted topic and get creative by mentioning "kudos" notes written first before diving into serious discussions to keep people motivated and excited.
Discussing Phase:
Once discussions begin on the voted topics, focus on noting the problems discussed, check if they align with priorities, and if they require an action plan. While listening and engaging, add what was discussed and confirm with the team before formalizing the action plan on the dashboard.
Wrap up phase
#10 Wrap up
Be cautious of the time—always. If it seems like the discussion will be lengthy, use the action plan to schedule a separate meeting.
End the meeting by thanking everyone who attended. Quickly recap what was discussed and agreed upon in the action plan before concluding. Retrium has a function called Return of Time Invested, where you can see the time used for the session.
After the Meeting
#11 Follow up after meeting
Here comes the actual essence of the retrospective meeting—it's what happens after the meeting! Regardless of how smoothly the conversation went, the meeting is considered successful when you have all the necessary action plans. For teams with a dedicated BA, even if the session was run by other team members, the BA will be responsible for:
Documenting all meeting notes.
Tracking and reminding the team of all action plans later.
Incorporating the learnings from the retro to be applied in the next sprint as needed.
Here’s a comprehensive guide on how to run retro using Retrium as a tool - Read more!
My verdict ? Navigating software retrospectives as a non-tech explorer? Like decoding a foreign language! Each session is unwrapping a surprise gift for me, really. The only way we can get better at this is to practice doing it.
Till next time friends, and good luck for your first / next retro! And remember, “everything is workable!”
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You can also explore my other blog post on Agile Delivery, Project Solutions, Agile Mindset and Career Bits on WorkWizard. Leave me a comment, would love to hear if we are on the same wavelength!
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