Retro: The Movie

How good are your retrospectives? Could they be better? Do you have the opportunity to watch other teams’ retros? Is there someone who you can invite to critique your meetings? During my time at Net-A-Porter, I was lucky enough to work with some excellent people and we helped each other improve. However, at a recent Scrum retreat, I realised that not everyone is so lucky.

Sam is a new Scrum Master. She works at a truly British company. Unfortunately, after going on a 2-day Scrum Master course, she returned to the office to an expectant crowd and felt totally out of her depth. She was alone. She wanted some support, but none was available.

This was the problem the team at the retreat set out to solve. I’ve already written about the exchange programme, but at the retreat I also followed up on an idea that originated with Ian Dominey. Although different from our original idea, I wanted to create a video of a retro that others could critique and learn from.

Based on our experiences, a group of us got together and, over two days, wrote and filmed “Retro: The Movie”. It’s under 14 minutes long, but offers an opportunity for experienced Scrum Masters and new CSMs alike to comment on what they think was positive and negative about the retro, what they would do differently, and come up with advice for the Scrum Master for the next retro.

Please watch the movie before reading any of the comments from others; it’s a great opportunity for you to develop your skills. Once you’ve watched it, feel free to add comments on this blog post or on YouTube.

We’re going to film further movies later in the year, so keep an eye out for those in the Autumn.