Retrospectives and how to keep them useful but short
My team thinks that 90 min for a retrospective of 2 weeks is too long and that we need to make it shorter any ideas. I have tried explaining to them what is retro and how it can help us but they still want it to be shorter than 90 min.
Why do they think that 90 minutes is too long?
Have you demonstrated how it can help instead of just explaining how it can help? A retrospective is good for identifying problems, designing solutions, and scoping out the work needed to solve them. Have you defined concrete steps, set aside sufficient time in the following Sprint to implement the solutions, and then revisited the effectiveness of those solutions in a later Sprint? Demonstrating that problems get solved rather than just talked about is one key factor in an effective retrospective.
If they are identifying meaningful actionable improvements throughout the Sprint, it may not take 90 minutes to then consider them. Are they diligently working on this, or leaving everything until later?
Thomas Owens yes we have made a lot of improvements. What my problem is that my guys don't want to spend much time on other things than just develop. They often don't see a problem if they can just pick up stories and finish them. Now problem here is that we often don't make the goal of the sprint. This being said we are as a team getting a lot better and more focus. I had a suggestion today today during the feedback over retro that perhaps we should try everyone only saying one thing they liked and 1 thing to improve so that we have less idea's and problems to go through. We are also now in a process of improving a lot of our process as we started with sprints of 4 weeks and never meetings the goals or finishing most or any of the stories on the sprint. So I am using the retros to also help the team align better on what is scrum, what values it has and how it can help us. As an example today I showed a 15 min video on what is the roll of the product owner and how he can help the team but also how the team can help him. His response to that was that the video could have been shared before hand so everyone could watch a separately to save time.
Ian Mitchell no unfortunetly we are not there yet.
What I struggle with is to keep the team engaged and committed. My PO is busy as he does many things with in the company (small company, he is also a stakeholder and a ux designer) and he often is not coming to retro's or he is late
I think the earlier points on retrospective are good.
I do lean towards 90 mins every 2 weeks to be a bit long. A longer retrospective every 4 weeks is good though. The idea you described of limiting the ideas is good to focus conversations and keep in time limits. Developers can find long meetings disrupting their "flow". I won't pay to much attention about a 15 min video bein to long. Your idea of having the team watch it together is good. One does not always get the same value watching it in isolation.
I would however suggest to find a balance between teaching/coaching the team and letting the team self-organise themselves.
I am using the retros to also help the team align better on what is scrum, what values it has and how it can help us
I showed a 15 min video on what is the roll of the product owner and how he can help the team but also how the team can help him. His response to that was that the video could have been shared before
It seems you have used Retro as place to tell them about Scrum. I agree with your POs comment.
My team thinks that 90 min for a retrospective of 2 weeks is too long
Let the team decides the time they want to spend on Retro. Scrum is all about inspect and adapt. You can help them by facilitating the discussion to bring out the improvements for next sprint.
In my opinion, empower the team to determine the optimal duration for the retrospective timebox through an experimental approach. This allows them to assess and adjust as necessary based on their collective insights and experiences.
I do agree with this. Encouraging the team to come up with their own suggestions fosters ownership and commitment to the process.
Meanwhile, discuss the learnings and benefits of retrospectives. While discussing, you could highlight specific instances where actionable insights from retrospectives led to improvements in team dynamics, processes, or product quality. By sharing these positive impact retrospectives have had on the team's work, you can reinforce the value of the process and inspire the team to actively engage in making it even more effective.