Product Description: See how to mine the experience of your software development team continually throughout the life of the project. The tools and recipes in this book will help you uncover and solve hidden (and not-so-hidden) problems with your technology, your methodology, and those difficult "people" issues on your team.
Project retrospectives help teams examine what went right and what went wrong on a project. But traditionally, retrospectives (also known as "post-mortems") are only helpful at the end of the project--too late to help. You need agile retrospectives that are iterative and incremental. You need to accurately find and fix problems to help the team today.
Now, Derby and Larsen show you the tools, tricks, and tips you need to fix the problems you face on a software development project on an on-going basis. You'll see how to architect retrospectives in general, how to design them specifically for your team and organization, how to run them effectively, how to make the needed changes, and how to scale these techniques up. You'll learn how to deal with problems, and implement solutions effectively throughout the project--not just at the end.
With regular tune-ups, your team will hum like a precise, world-class orchestra.
Full of really practical and fun advice This is one of those "common sense" books. It's full of really obvious practical advice. The difference I found however is in the multitude of simple and practical exercises it contains.
The book is a really quick and easy read. It's now constantly on my desk as a reference. I plan to use a few of the exercises in our next retrospective in a week.
Whilst this is an agile/scrum focused book, many of the exercises could be easily adapted to other "review" type situations in business and teaching.
About emotional perception not enhancing the development of software... I have read at least 10 books of the Pragmatic Series and this is the first one I couldn't finish because it was so terrible (I actually threw it out). This book is exactly what is wrong with corporate culture. Placating overly sensitive employees who need emotional coddling instead of trying to improve the process of software development. I prefer to work with adults, that have the maturity to get their emotional needs fulfilled outside of work, so time at work can be spent being productive. This book should have been titled "Cloy Retrospectives" or "Agile Dianetics". If you are looking for a worthwhile, and even entertaining, book on software management see Managing Humans by Michael Lopp.
Must-read for any scrum master This is a really useful book. Most practical. Being into scrum (sort of) for 3 months, we've tried to change our retrospective meeting agenda applying methods from this book. We did this just once as yet, and applied only a single combination of methods from virtually countless variants possible. The result is great: retrospective meetings became more meaningful and fun.
Every scrum master (and anyone leading retrospective meeetings) should read this book.
If only for the examples, this is worth reading This year, I found myself leading an agile development team. While I've been in the software industry for several decades, I'm new to agile. I was lucky enough to attend the Agile 2007 conference, where I participated in a session with Esther Derby and Diana Larsen. That's where I first learned about retrospectives - from the co-authors of this book.
First, the idea of retrospectives, as opposed to post-mortems (are our projects really dead?), as an ongoing process is challenging and exciting. Rather than waiting until the end, reviewing not just progress but the state of the team makes great sense.
Then, the way that they put it all together - stating the value of the process, giving an outline for how to conduct a retrospective - makes it something you can indeed do right from the book.
But as much as anything, the exercises/activities that make up a large part of this book are a tremendous value. Rather than trying to figure out "what should we do/say in a retrospective?", we are guided through combinations of activities to help us achieve the most effective results.
And it's not just about agile. While the concept has developed through the growth of agile development practices, this is a tool that can benefit any organization of any type doing anything.
It's a quick read with benefits that far outweigh the time it takes to read it. Ready to change the life of your organization? Introduce retrospectives.
Use it every retrospective I refer to the activities in the book all the time. It really gives a fresh look at the retrospective and keeps the team engaged. It's very easy to come out with some actions to carry forward which the team is committed to doing.
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