Monday 12 January 2009

Sprint retrospective helper

If you're a developer doing SCRUM having regular sprint retrospective meetings you have probably experienced the situation where you are supposed to write down what went well and what could have been done better. You try to come up with some neat suggestions but you feel that a bunch of topics have been forgotten.

To make it easier to remember stuff for the retrospective you can always start jotting them down when you have them fresh in memory so you are sure to have them on the retrospective.

The list below was made to help remember stuff for the retrospective. It's a sample list or example of keywords to jog your memory and help you brain storm. This list might also be used for small informal project evaluations etc.

Process
standup, daily, meetings, deployment, out of control, reproducing, testing, planning, demos, keeping track, improving, design, results are not lost, handling issues, stabilization, complex, analysis, integration, velocity, timing, flow, pace, think, sprint planning, charts, start and stop, costs, tendencies, peer review, progress, feedback, goals, sticky notes, whiteboard, stepping on toes, race, hand over, significant events, timeline, consensus, management, senior, anchoring.

Policies
source control, decisions, documentation, who decides, hand over, scope and deadlines, quality, staffing, QA, code review, getting credit, mission, vision, risks, bug tracking, issues, automation, analysis, refactoring, activities, accountability, user stories, phases, patterns, architecture, holism, holidays, culture, flow, dummy data, data creation, silo, not used, bounce, ripple effects, peer review, boundaries, proof of concept, skills, metrics, completing stuff before moving on, training, knowledge management, help desk, manual steps, documentation, prototype, risk analysis, cost analysis, contract.

Work environment
collaboration, work hours, new members, number of members, organization, customer, development tools, scrum tool, communication tools, roles, stakeholders, customer involvement, engagement, uncertainties, environments, optimizations, tasks, boring, exciting, change, skills, food, chaos, familiarity, fun, stress, computers, software, 3rd party, external , actors, energy, air, sit/stand, down time, remote/local, crash, branch, control, differences, conformance, competition, constructive, freedom, job security, fatigue, hopelessness, knowledge, oversight, feelings, blaim.

Communications
project participants, dependence, overview, noise, out of sync, expectations, errors, bug, reports, backlogs, requirements specifications, availability, members, stakeholders, members are up to date, lessons learned, loops, acceptance, rejection, hours, timeboxing, impediments, design, styling, wireframes, business goals, unity, talking to seniors, backlog, details, understanding, agenda, conclusions, vague, abstract, appreciations, secrets, honest, creativity, confront, good enough, impact, consequences, questions, ask, feasibility, summary.