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Fifty Quick Ideas To Improve Your Retrospectives
Learn how to improve retrospectives and avoid stagnation, with fifty ideas designed to help you enhance and energise your continuous improvement effort. This book will help you get better outcomes from retrospectives and from any continuous improvement initiative. It will help you consider how best to prepare for retrospectives, generate innovative insights, achieve valuable outcomes, improve facilitation techniques, keep things fresh and maybe even how to have a bit of fun whilst doing it.
This book is for anyone who undertakes continuous improvement of any sort, especially those looking to get better outcomes from retrospectives, either as a participant, facilitator, coach or manager of teams. We include ideas for people with varying levels of experience. So, whether you are just getting started with Scrum and retrospectives, or a veteran of continuous improvement looking to fine-tune or get new ideas, or if your retrospectives have become a bit stale and need re-invigorating, there are ideas in here to support you.
This book is for anyone who undertakes continuous improvement of any sort, especially those looking to get better outcomes from retrospectives, either as a participant, facilitator, coach or manager of teams. We include ideas for people with varying levels of experience. So, whether you are just getting started with Scrum and retrospectives, or a veteran of continuous improvement looking to fine-tune or get new ideas, or if your retrospectives have become a bit stale and need re-invigorating, there are ideas in here to support you.
237 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 9, 2015
31 people are currently reading
188 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
November 24, 2015
Consistent with prev 2 books in the series: won't rock your work by bringing in truly new ideas, but will help you re-focus & remind yourself what aspects of retros are really important. Another similarity to prev 2 books: it gets significantly worse & worse the further you go (lemme paraphrase one of ideas: "dim the light to stimulate creativity and willingness to share insights" - WTF? o_O).
3 stars, not less, but surely not more either.
3 stars, not less, but surely not more either.
July 14, 2018
This book follows the two others "fifty quick ideas" titles. Unfortunately, it's the weakest one. Not a bad book either. You can, with advantages, pick up some useful stuff here and there. But overall, the items are far too general to be useful. It makes the title somehow misleading. The two others books are good everyday references, this one is not.
Ma note de lecture en Français ici
Ma note de lecture en Français ici
November 14, 2015
I am already applying a number of the prescribed practices, so I did not feel that I gleaned much new information from this book. That said, I found the writing style to be easy-to-read. Although I did not add much new information to my retrospective repertoire, this is still a valuable resource. The book excels at coherently cataloging a number of disparate ideas in the realm of retrospectives. I plan to refer back to various sections over time as I reflect on my retrospectives.
December 31, 2015
I'm a fan of the “Fifty Quick Ideas To Improve Your ...” series and was therefore keen to read this book. Unfortunately this one is not up to the rest of the series. Retrospectives are all but easy when you want to get a useful outcome. There are a few good ideas in the book that may improve your next retrospective. But in my opinion there where to few ideas that clicked with me and I missed the aha moments I had with the 50 ideas to improve your tests.
September 13, 2021
I really like the "Fifty Quick Ideas" books, they really recap many other books although I still find some more to add to my reading list.
Most of the ideas here about how to make retrospectives more productive, how to define action items, how to get numbers on it, how to improve the trust in the process and stuff like this. And sometimes the ideas are kind of surprising like if you want participants to talk about difficult topics - find a room with a door. Or if you dim the light people are more creative.
For me the key points were the hints how to facilitate a retro and actually the idea to actually invite stakeholders to start a discussion about things that seems to be wrong from their end.
Most of the ideas here about how to make retrospectives more productive, how to define action items, how to get numbers on it, how to improve the trust in the process and stuff like this. And sometimes the ideas are kind of surprising like if you want participants to talk about difficult topics - find a room with a door. Or if you dim the light people are more creative.
For me the key points were the hints how to facilitate a retro and actually the idea to actually invite stakeholders to start a discussion about things that seems to be wrong from their end.
September 14, 2017
A great read for any agile practitioner, especially those who think they've seen it all. I bet you’ll find a few ideas you hadn't thought of yet.
Each idea is divided into the same structure: headline, picture (great!), description, key benefits, and "How to make it work". The latter is the most important one, so I recommend to read "How to make it work" before "Key benefits". (And if in a hurry, skip the key benefits altogether. What matters is what you actually get out of it.)
Each idea is divided into the same structure: headline, picture (great!), description, key benefits, and "How to make it work". The latter is the most important one, so I recommend to read "How to make it work" before "Key benefits". (And if in a hurry, skip the key benefits altogether. What matters is what you actually get out of it.)
January 25, 2021
A book with a lot of tools
This book is a good way to understand why we have retrospectives and how tris impacts the way our teams work. Maybe you won’t apply all the ideas, but you now different ways to facilitate a retrospective and keep helping your team to improve continuously.
This book is a good way to understand why we have retrospectives and how tris impacts the way our teams work. Maybe you won’t apply all the ideas, but you now different ways to facilitate a retrospective and keep helping your team to improve continuously.
January 15, 2017
Great ideas
I have been running retrospectives for 5 years now in software development teams, still this book provided me with a lot of insights. I appreciated the clear and concise way the authors used to express the concepts. Really recommended!
I have been running retrospectives for 5 years now in software development teams, still this book provided me with a lot of insights. I appreciated the clear and concise way the authors used to express the concepts. Really recommended!
December 16, 2018
Great source of ideas on how to improve improving your agile process.
There are few chapters defined each tackles different set of problems like improving outcomes. In each you will find many ideas on how to change your process and why.
There are few chapters defined each tackles different set of problems like improving outcomes. In each you will find many ideas on how to change your process and why.
March 4, 2020
Very good retrospectives book
I was looking for new dinamics for to make retrospectives, but instead I find a book with so much value tips to get continuous improvement into the agile teams with retrospective reviews.
I was looking for new dinamics for to make retrospectives, but instead I find a book with so much value tips to get continuous improvement into the agile teams with retrospective reviews.
November 7, 2017
Very good tips and new ideas about retrospectives. Specially valuable for people who have been facilitating for a while...
January 3, 2018
Because of first 2 "50 quick ideas" (user stories and testing), I was expecting much more inspiring ideas.
February 21, 2016
Great read for anyone looking to improve their retrospectives and serves as a good reference book for those that already do well. Book is well organised and full of handy tips around making a business case, small improvements, feedback loops, challenging de-facto and on-demand retros.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews