How to Overcome 13 Agile Retrospective Smells (aka Symptoms)

This class is intended as an aid to running more effective sprint retrospectives. Thirteen common smells, or ailments, have been discussed when it comes to agile retrospective. Here they are:

• All talk, no action
• All action, no talk
• Conversation too controlled
• Too repetitive
• No preparation
• Too many goals
• Poorly formed actions
• One person owns all actions
• Too much time complaining
• Too much bullying
• No participation
• Nothing change
• Because Agile says so

For each of them is detailed symptoms to detect the potential issue, and how to cure it.

This course applies to Agile projects (scrum, kanban, xp, lean), but also to all projects that involve working as a team, managing conflict and increase productivity. 

References

• Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great, Esther Derby & Diana Larsen
• The Retrospective Handbook, Patrick Kua
• Improving Agile Retrospectives, Marc Loeffler
• Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making, Sam Kaner 

Next time you're involved in a meeting to organize a family gathering, a party or, something else, try to detect smells when it comes to assigning tasks. Offer your help to improve the outcome by trying solutions presented in the course for corresponding smell.