Improving Agile Retrospectives: Helping Teams Become More Efficient, 1/e

10Typical Problems and Pitfalls

As with everything in life, retrospectives do have a few typical problems and pitfalls for which you should be prepared. These things can make your life very difficult indeed and have a decisive influence on the success of a retrospective. In this chapter, I’ll introduce some of these problems and pitfalls, as well as some possible solutions.

10.1 Poor Preparation

Some people treat retrospectives as they do any other meeting. That is, it’s enough to send out an invitation, sit down in the room and get started. Some other people believe that all you need to carry out a retrospective is a simple question, something like: “What do you want to do better in the next iteration?” As you’ve seen over the course of this ...