Don’t Neglect Retrospective Action

Wayne is a software developer, ScrumMaster and Agile Coach.

  Agile   Scrum   Talent Management   Teams   ProjectsAtWork  

In the quest for continuous team improvement, identifying corrective actions through retrospectives is only the first step. Those actions need to be agreed upon by the team, made visible and tracked by the Scrum Master, revisited at the next retrospective, and celebrated upon successful implementation.

I have previously outlined several approaches that agile teams can use to identify corrective actions to drive continuous improvement (see “Fresh Retrospectives”). However, I have learned from experience that identifying corrective actions in a retrospective is only part of the battle. To ensure that the team get the full benefit from their proposed actions they must be appropriately managed. Without such management valuable corrective actions can get lost or unnecessarily delayed and the team can lose faith in the retrospective process. The end result can be a stalling of continuous improvement, which is a disaster for an agile team. 

This article outlines a couple of measures I take to effectively manage retrospective actions.

Agreeing to the Actions

The starting point for retrospective action management is in the retrospective itself. If the session has been successful then at the end there will be a set of corrective actions that have been identified by one or more team members. The Scrum Master should go through each action in turn …

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