Retrospective meeting
My understanding of a Retrospective is that it is:
- intended to promote continuous process improvements
- an opportunity to inspect the people, relationships, process, and tools in the last Sprint
- to capture lessons learned
In one project, we use the Happiness score during the Retrospective meeting to assess the satisfaction or feeling of each team member after a sprint. When team members explain their happiness score, I noticed it is most often related to the progress they were able to make or not able to make in their work over the sprint. I'm wondering if it is right that the focus of their Happiness score be mainly related to their development work, or if their assessment should be wider than that? One thing it reveals though is that even if the collaborative aspect went very well, their satisfaction is still mainly linked to their progress in their targeted development work. Any thoughts?
Your understanding of the Retrospective is correct.
I usually adjust my Retrospective each sprint to help the team focus on the most important issues. As a Scrum Master I can quickly see what is going well or not so well during the sprint by observing and listening to the team that way I can make sure I give them directions to the things I think are impoprtant to address during the Retrospective.
Over last couple of years I have collected a list of Retrospective techniques that I like to use in various situations. I generally changing Retrospective is a good way of getting more insights from your team and helping them look at their work from different angles.
You can check Funretrospectives website for some ideas. I was also writing about a couple of technique on my LinkedIn profile a while back. Or generally searching for new techniques online will give you plenty of ideas.
I'm wondering if it is right that the focus of their Happiness score be mainly related to their development work, or if their assessment should be wider than that?
Is this proving to be a useful measure? Are the team able to inspect and adapt their way-of-working in light of what is being shown, and demonstrate meaningful improvement each Sprint?