Agile Retrospectives

9.2 Including Cross-Organizational Perspectives

Iteration retrospectives emphasize the team, its methods, and its interactions. Release and project retrospectives include the broader organizational perspective. While organizational issues may come up in an iteration retrospective, in a release or project retrospective cross-organizational issues are the main focus.

Setting the Stage    Setting the stage works the same for most retrospectives. Cover the same bases as for an iteration retrospective. Even if your team has working agreements, work with the entire group to establish the agreements that this group will abide by for this retrospective. Pay special attention to reminding people that the goal of the retrospective is learning, and fixing problems, not blaming.

Gathering Data    Make sure the data-gathering activities explicitly include perspectives outside the team. One way to do this is to name categories of data such as technology and tools, people and teams, process, and organizational systems. Another is to create an event time-line that specifies each organization present in the retrospective. See variations on Timeline in Chapter 5, ​Activities to Gather Data​.

Generating Insights    Because people are in different parts of the organization, they see things differently. Their interests—what’s important to them—are different. Being aware of these differences helps people work more effectively in the organization. Listen for surprises and contradictory interpretations. ...