Reddit reviews Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great

The retro is the key, IMO. I recommend reading “Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great” by Esther Derby & Diana Larsen. Lots of good stuff there! https://www.amazon.com/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Teams-Great/dp/0977616649/ref=nodl_

Hello! Have you read Esther Derby's "Agile retrospectives"?

https://www.amazon.com/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Teams-Great/dp/0977616649

It provides a good explanation of all the retrospective stages, as well as activities to do for each stage (in your case, the "gather data" stage). Or you could try some activities like those described in funretrospectives.com

Having said that, sometimes it is just better to talk than write. I do many of my retros on a cafeteria outside where we all sit in a table (12 people). The format is simple, no writing, we just talk one after the other (or just begin a conversation) to collect our memories and problems form the previous sprint. It is amazing how powerful that is.

I'm going through this book now...highly recommended:

https://www.amazon.com/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Teams-Great/dp/0977616649

Also, try using some liberating structures which you can learn about here: http://www.liberatingstructures.com/ls/

To gather insight, help teams find their own places they want to improve, and generate self-realized learning... try Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great.

Consensus driving change or driving work is all about figuring out what is the next best thing to try and improve.

If you aren't already, try capturing the outputs of your retros and have the team commit to one thing you want to make better or make great. Make this an actual backlog item and track it as you would work coming in. It should be owned by everyone, and it should be a driving force to try some actions to improve it. If you can get 1 thing agreed to by the team to improve, and then a proposed action to try as a team; you will rapidly find your pain points and make them better.

The Phoenix Project is probably the best book out there - I also recommend: https://smile.amazon.com/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Teams-Great/dp/0977616649/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1520447802&sr=1-3&keywords=Agile+Retrospectives

Because retros are hard to do right and awful when done wrong.

If you go the Agile approach, I'd recommend you start with retrospectives. This is a great tool to identify problems and needs of the team and start addressing them in following iterations. Even if you don't go full Scrum or whatever, I'd insist you try retrospectives. If you want some good reading try this: http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Teams-Great/dp/0977616649

Pens and post its work.


This book gives you hundreds of actionable opportunities based on the audience: https://www.amazon.com/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Teams-Great/dp/0977616649

I do a set of activities as discussed in Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby.

Mad, Sad, Glad is a really great activity to focus the team's thoughts and Gather data. However, if you can define a full set of activities to draw insights and then add Spikes/Enabler to your Backlog, it will really help the team. From the time I started doing these activities, the team performance improved dramatically and I have stuck with the template. If you are interested do read about it in an article about the template that I have written.

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