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I did retrospectives at a job for 2.5 years. I don't think in those ~60 retros, was there one thing we actually changed or accomplished. Certainly much gripin
by Gunax 4y ago
I did retrospectives at a job for 2.5 years.
I don't think in those ~60 retros, was there one thing we actually changed or accomplished.
Certainly much griping happened. But ultimately very little couod be accomlished, because our problems were beyond the team.
I would love to see retrospectives that worked, just to know what they are like. But so far I mostly see people forced to contribute to the retro, which results in:
1. Generic pats on the back for every minor thing we did. 'Really good job releasing feature X!'
2. Lot's of social compliments and jokes. 'X joined the team! Yay!'
3. Problems that we know about, but aren't tractable. 'The database schema we made 10 years ago really sucks!' but fixing it isn't practical.
- lostcolony 4y agoSo there probably were some things during that time the team could change, even if it was out of pure pragmatism (i.e., "well, raising this issue led to a bunch of busy work. Let's not raise that kind of issue any more"). But even if not, there certainly was benefit just agreeing "yeah, this is a problem we can't address", since that builds a stronger team. That said, the situation you describe gets solved by the org adopting a retro itself. The team lead raises the broader issues up at a retro with other stakeholders/higher level management/etc, who -can- fix it.