What is a sprint retrospective?
A sprint retrospective is a review conducted after a sprint that plays a key role in the Agile methodology. A sprint retrospective aims to determine what went well and where you had problems and identify areas where you can improve.
Regular reviews are an essential part of team collaboration. By understanding what works and what doesn’t, you can improve Agile processes to simplify your next sprint.
Who should attend a sprint retrospective meeting?
Your sprint retrospective meeting should include the product owner, the Scrum team, the Scrum Master, and stakeholders. During a sprint retrospective meeting, it’s good to have a diverse array of perspectives in the room. Everyone can work together to analyze your latest sprint and determine what changes you need to make before starting the next portion of your project.
Why are sprint retrospectives important?
Conducting a sprint retrospective allows you to learn from your previous efforts and improve future sprints, leading to streamlined Scrum sprints and a better end result. Here are some of the benefits of using sprint retrospectives:
- Fosters continuous improvement
- Enhances team collaboration
- Encourages problem-solving
- Prevents repeated mistakes
- Results in better quality deliverables
- Improves team morale
Retrospectives in action
A team's sticky notes from an offsite Retrospective.
This team used Confluence to summarize the conversation of their Retrospective.
A Retrospective over Zoom using Trello to set ground rules, add thoughts, and guide the discussion.
What you'll need
Remote
Video conferencing with screenshare
Digital collaboration tool (see templates)
In-Person
Meeting space
Whiteboard, or large sheet of paper
Markers
Sticky notes
Timer
Recommended templates
Atlassian Templates
5 steps for a successful sprint retrospective meeting
In addition to using retrospective templates, you can follow a few simple steps to conduct a successful sprint retrospective meeting. Everyone on the team should feel welcome to contribute to the meeting. Once you’ve collected feedback, you can analyze that feedback and create action items for improvements.
Here are 5 steps for a successful sprint retrospective meeting:
Step 1: Set the tone
Setting the tone is the first step of conducting a sprint retrospective. The goal of sprint planning is to collect feedback from different perspectives and use that feedback to set goals and improve Agile processes. Everyone should feel like they have a voice at a sprint review, so set that tone from the beginning of the meeting.
You want to encourage people to share feedback and provide valuable insights during your sprint retrospective. Focus on improving instead of blaming people for mistakes, and allow everyone to communicate openly and honestly.
Example: Confluence
Running this Play remotely? Use this free Retrospective template to guide the conversation and capture your session’s output.
Step 2: Gather feedback
Once you’ve set the tone and everyone knows what kind of input you’re looking for, you can gather team members' feedback. The 4 Ls retrospective is one way to gather feedback by asking what everyone has loved, loathed, learned, and longed for during a sprint. If people have difficulty providing detailed feedback, using the 4 Ls provides a basic guideline.
There are various ways to gather feedback from everyone at your sprint retrospective. You can have a group discussion if everyone is comfortable with that. You can also have team members complete surveys or submit anonymous feedback that you can use to improve your next sprint.
Tip: Customize this list
Modify the rules to fit your team’s unique needs. Add anything you think will help your team improve.
Tip: Create a safe space
Define how the information will be discussed after the Play. Will it be shared with leadership? Consider adopting the Chatham House Rule.
Step 3: Generate insights
Collecting feedback is only part of the battle when conducting a sprint retrospective — you need to put that feedback into action. Analyze the feedback you received to look for patterns and trends that may give you a better understanding of your team and the previous sprint.
These insights are a key part of setting goals, so encourage everyone to collaborate and contribute any valuable insights they may have. We already mentioned how important it is to have different perspectives at a sprint review meeting, which becomes apparent when generating insights.
Step 4: Create action items
Once you’ve learned more about your Agile team and your most recent sprint, you can turn those insights into actionable items. This is where you can start setting goals and determine what changes to make for future sprints.
It’s essential to set SMART goals — specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Setting SMART goals is crucial to achieving success and ensures that your goals are reachable and provide relevant results for your company.
Tip: Make sure all are heard
If the discussion is dominated by one or two people, the facilitator should step in and call on others before moving on.
Step 5: Close out the retrospective
Now that you’ve taken steps to learn from your last sprint and improve your next one, you can close out your sprint retrospective meeting. Provide a summary of key takeaways from the meeting, express your gratitude for everyone who contributed to the meeting, and give everyone a sense of closure.
When you leave your sprint retrospective meeting, you should have a clear implementation plan so your hard work doesn’t go to waste. Knowing how you will implement changes is a key part of sprint meetings.
Tip: Update your workflows
If any of the action items have corresponding Jira issues, include links to them on the page so it's easy to see their status.
Incorporate actions from the retrospective into your day-to-day, whether it’s in stand-ups, or weekly team status updates.
Sprint retrospective meeting ideas
As an Agile team leader, your job goes beyond understanding Scrum board basics — you have to lead meetings to generate valuable insights. Looking at sprint retrospective examples can help you develop ideas for your next sprint retrospective meeting so you can streamline the process and collect valuable feedback.
Using the 4 Ls method can encourage team members to offer feedback and give you a quick idea of what went well and where you need to improve.
You can also use the sad, mad, glad framework to create a discussion at your next sprint retrospective. Just create three columns that give your team a template for providing feedback:
- Sad: What disappointed you? Were there any areas where you felt you could improve?
- Mad: What frustrated you? Was there something that stopped you from performing your best?
Glad: What were your favorite moments during the project? What do you think went well?
There are various ways to encourage discussions at sprint retrospectives, so don’t be afraid to experiment to keep meetings dynamic. Keep in mind that some teams may prefer anonymous feedback, and there’s nothing wrong with that. You can tailor your sprint retrospectives to determine what works for your team.
Sprint retrospective meeting ideas
Sprint retrospectives may seem overwhelming at first, but they’re a pretty straightforward concept. You can use a sprint retrospective template or follow the five steps listed in this guide. As long as you’re gathering feedback and using it to generate insights and implement changes, you’re doing something right.
Every Sprint retrospective begins with a successful Sprint. Jira offers several key features that can help you organize successful sprints, including:
- Backlogs: Backlogs allow you to list all the work related to a project or initiative. You can break this work down into individual sprints — which are usually 2 weeks.
- Boards: Jira boards allow you to break your large project into more manageable pieces so you can plan your sprints and ensure your deliverables ship faster.
- Timelines: Timelines keep your team in sync with stakeholders, providing an overview of the project timeline with mapped work items, dependencies, and releases.
Jira makes it easy for Agile teams to visualize, track, and manage sprints. With Jira, you can streamline your next sprint to ensure timely deliverables. Try Jira Scrum Boards and see how Jira can help you optimize your Agile team.
Sprint retrospective: frequently asked questions
What are some common challenges of a sprint retrospective?
A lack of feedback is one of the biggest potential challenges of a sprint retrospective. If people aren’t transparent or are having trouble providing detailed feedback, it’s hard to determine what went well and what didn’t. You can encourage better input by providing a simple structure for your sprint retrospective, such as the sad, mad, glad (SMG) method and the 4 Ls method. You can also try collecting anonymous submissions.
You should also avoid focusing on one-time mistakes or successes. Sprint retrospectives are about improving your next sprint, so don’t focus on feedback that won’t impact the rest of your project.
How long should a sprint retrospective meeting be?
The length of your sprint retrospective meeting can vary depending on the duration of the sprint. Sprint retrospectives can be as short as 45 minutes or as long as 3 hours — it all depends on the sprint. While you want to be efficient in everything you do, it’s important to give your team enough time to have a meaningful discussion and make progress during a sprint retrospective.
What questions should you ask in a sprint retrospective?
There are several ways to stimulate discussion in a sprint retrospective. You can use the 4 Ls method to ask people what they loved, loathed, learned, and longed for in a sprint. You can also use the sad, mad, glad method to dive deeper into your most recent sprint. Some questions you may want to ask during a sprint retrospective include:
- What went well?
- What went wrong?
- What did you learn?
What changes can we make?
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