12 Steps to Running a Retrospective Like a Pro: Step 3

by Scrum Alliance, John McFadyen

Join Certified Scrum Trainer® John McFadyen for a 12-part video series exploring the scrum event known as the sprint retrospective. Throughout the series, he’ll share tips and tricks for creating impactful, engaging, and effective sprint retrospectives for your teams.

To facilitate a great retrospective, you'll need some interactive exercises. While many tried-and-true ones are available online, The Four Ls of Retrospectives is an excellent activity for brainstorming ideas, engaging your team, and creating a learning culture.

In this video, Certified Scrum Trainer John McFadyen recommends going through each L individually, starting with Like, because it brings positivity to the session. He prefers ending with Learn since it gives the team time to reflect on the lessons learned from the sprint.

To get started, you'll create a board with the Four Ls listed (either physically in the room or using a digital tool like Miro). Everyone on the team will submit sticky notes and have time to brainstorm their ideas silently, allowing people to center themselves and avoiding shouting matches if you have highly vocal team members.

#1) What have you liked?

Ask team members what they liked about the sprint. People commonly talk about communication that they liked during the sprint.

#2) What have you lacked?

Next, you'll ask team members what they lacked during the sprint. Perhaps they didn't have enough time to complete their work or received enough communication from other team members or leaders.

#3) What have you longed for?

Some team members long for certain things. Perhaps they want a new tool, or they need a holiday.

#4) What have you learned?

Learning is the most essential part of the retrospective, and it's important to emphasize that the team is there to learn as much as they are there to do.

McFadyen recommends a one-hour brainstorming session for each topic to get in-depth communication with the retrospective. When the discussion concludes, the team can see commonalities and use that information to generate insights and decide what actions to take going forward.

Need to watch any of the other videos in the series? Find the links below!

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Presenter(s)

Scrum Alliance

John McFadyen

John McFadyen is an Executive and Enterprise Agile Coach with proven experience working on some of the UK and Europe’s largest, most complex Agile Transformations. As a Certified Scrum Trainer, John brings a wealth of experience as an Agile coach, Agile practitioner and software developer into each of the 4 core courses he provides. Certified ScrumMaster Certified Scrum Product Owner Advanced Certified ScrumMaster Certified Scrum Professional ScrumMaster The war stories, the insights into successful Agile transformations and everything he has learned from coaching high-performance Agile teams combines to provide course delegates with a unique, compelling training experience that transforms as much as it empowers. John is passionate about cultivating high-performing Agile organisations that unleash people’s passion and creativity. As an Agile coach, John has worked with C-Suite level individuals on cultivating and embedding Business Agility within the DNA or large organisations. In addition to being an Agile coach and Certified Scrum Trainer, John is also a founding partner of Agile Centre. As an entrepreneur, John works at growing Agile capability with clients from around the world. Agile Centre has fast established itself as a pioneer in the cultivation and development of Agile capabilities within organisations great and small. John leverages his experience as an Agile coach, consultant and trainer to help organisations embed Agile values, mindsets and develop a high-performance culture of Business Agility. John is also deeply invested in growing the next generation of great Scrum Masters via the Agile Coaching Academy. An 18-month journey that helps practitioners move through an apprenticeship in Agile coaching through to journeyman and practising Agile coach. John is also an international keynote speaker, author and Business Agility mentor. Visit www.johnmcfadyen.com for more insights into John’s writing, thought leadership and mentorship.