Should managers participate in Retrospective meetings

There are managers that insist on being part of the Retrospective meetings.  Let’s analyze this further and then the reader can decide for themselves as to what is the best practice.  Firstly, let’s look at the manager’s point of view.  Why do managers want to be part of a Retrospective meeting?

1. They are trying to develop a working and problem-solving relationship with the team members.
2. They may feel that they can solve the team’s problems on the spot and much quicker if they participate.
3. They would like to see for themselves who are the leaders and problem solvers on the team
4. They would like to be the first ones to provide kudos and congratulations to the team and team members.

All of the above are good intentions.  There can also be some malicious ones. For example, they may suspect that the team is ganging up against management.  They may feel that the team is not performing and maybe fishing on ways to restructure the team

Let’s go back to the drawing board and try to understand what’s the purpose of a Retrospective meeting.  Referring to scrum.org https://www.scrum.org/resources/what-is-a-sprint-retrospective.

As described in the Scrum Guide, the purpose of the Sprint Retrospective is to plan ways to increase quality and effectiveness. During the Sprint Retrospective, the team (PO, Developers and the Scrum Master) discuss:

1. What went well in the Sprint
2. What could be improved
3. What will we commit to improve in the next Sprint?

By the end of the Sprint Retrospective, the Scrum Team should have identified improvements that it will implement in the next Sprint.

Referring to another article in Scrum.org

https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/back-foundations-scrum-framework-sprint-retrospective-and-transparency

Here’s the summary, as stated in the article.

At the end of your Sprint Retrospective, does your Scrum Team have a common understanding about what they will improve and what actions they will take?

The author then went on to prompt the reader as follows:

What does Transparency mean to you and your team? And how do you and your team use the Sprint Retrospective to raise Transparency?

Here’s my take on the question – Should managers participate in Sprint Retrospective Meetings?

The question the team needs to ask, are you able to be transparent with each other to achieve the desired results from the Retrospective? Is the manager being present going to limit the transparency? Are we going to ask the manager to leave the meeting if there are issues with management that need to be discussed?  Who is going to ask the manager to leave?

The situation is somewhat similar to the race equality situation, where we want to promote racial equality in the workplace.  Even if one person is offended by a racially insensitive comment then it has to stop.  Similarly, in a Scrum Retrospective situation, if one team member is hindered by the presence of the manager, then we cannot have a truly transparent meeting with the manager in attendance and that defeats the purpose of the Retrospective meeting.