Conduct Data Sprint Retrospective

(Activity) for Tier: Data Analytics

PURPOSE

The Data Sprint retrospective is an opportunity for the team to inspect itself and create a plan for improvements generally enacted during the next Sprint. The retrospective should be scheduled to occur after and can include reflection on the Storytelling Session activity. The Scrum Master facilitates identifying opportunities for improvement and creates an opportunity plan to implement those improvements.

WHEN

At the end of a sprint following Conduct Story Telling Session

PARTICIPATING ROLES

• ACCOUNTABLE

  • Scrum Master

• RESPONSIBLE

  • Data Science Project Manager
  • Data Scientist
  • Data Engineer
  • Subject Matter Expert
  • Data Steward

INPUTS

• Action items from previous retrospective
• Question board
• Team task board
• Sprint objective questions
• Visualizations
• Storytelling brief
• Insights from analysis

Todo

need to be define work products for all inputs.

ENTRY CRITERIA

• The team completed or aborted a sprint.

SUB-ACTIVITIES

1. Review Past Retrospective.

   • Welcome the team and appreciate them for investing the time in the retrospective.
   • Record attendance.
   • Review the action items from the last retrospective to ensure follow through occurred or impediments are addressed.

2. Check Safety

   • Facilitate a safety check by allowing the team to anonymously quantify how safe they feel. Keep the scale small so not to overthink minor variances. Teams should understand and use the same scale. Consider the following:

     • 5 - No Problem, I’ll talk about anything
     • 4 - I’ll talk about almost anything; a few things might be hard
     • 3 - I’ll talk about some things, but others will be hard to say
     • 2 - I’m not going to say much, I’ll let others bring up issues
     • 1 - I’ll smile, claim everything is great and agree with managers

   • A safety check must be non-attributable. Consider using online anonymous tools prior to the meeting for non-collocated teams.

   • Make the safety check result visible to the whole team. Acknowledge the result and decide the next steps. Don’t force an analysis of the safety issues within the retrospective. The Scrum Master can follow up with the team to decide how safety issues should be handled.

3. Gather Inputs

   • List out any facts or observations discovered in the following steps. Limit the list to items the team thinks is worthy of discussion.

     • What did we intend to do?
     • What did we actually do?
     • What went well?
     • What didn’t go well?

4. Generate Action Items

   • Rank and select observations

     • Query each person to endorse one or two items on the list of inputs. The facilitator should discourage comments and judgments on endorsements.
     • Rank the list by quantity of endorsements considering any significance qualifiers used.

5. Decide what to do

   • Discuss potential solutions for each action item selected and ensure multiple perspectives are elicited.
   • Opportunities discovered in the retrospective are ideally implementable in the next sprint for quicker feedback but may also include longer term objectives.
   • Escalate opportunities that may benefit the project or organization by marking them with an “Escalate” tag.

OUTPUTS

• Prioritized list of action items for improvement

Todo

need to define work products for all outputs.

EXIT CRITERIA

• Individuals shared their observations without retribution.
• The team analyzed the most important outcomes reported.

NEXT ACTIVITY

• Question Breakdown Meeting

Process Guidance Version: 10.4