February 3, 2025 • 31 mins
Sprint retrospective is the most important ritual in Agile philosophy. I'll share how you can build your own goal management system that is perfectly tailored to your life circumstances.
The Calm Ambition Club: https://monthlymethod.com/calm-ambition-club/
Blog posts mentioned:
Sprint-end celebration https://monthlymethod.com/sprint-end-celebration/
The baby shower story https://monthlymethod.com/failed-sprint-goals/
Optimizing life for a regular Tuesday https://monthlymethod.com/regular-tuesday/
Timeline:
00:00 - Overview
00:38 - What is a sprint retrospective?
01:07 - The shocking part
02:58 - Agile take on growth
04:03 - Sprint retrospective in teams
05:48 - Personal sprint retrospective
07:17 - Becoming your own guru and building your own system
08:51 - Cathedral Effect
09:18 - What got done?
10:46 - What didn't get done?
13:01 - How accurate was your sprint capacity calculation?
13:38 - Quality of life review
14:48 - Creating a Notes file for sprint retrospectives
15:50 - Example: Deeper Why
18:55 - Don't add to your to-do list
20:08 - Example: Making a promise
21:44 - Example: Leaving my phone at home
22:51 - Example: Reddit goal
25:54 - Going a level deeper into why we should do sprint retrospectives
26:54 - Life craftsmanship. The art of living.
28:50 - Curation in a function of time.
Learn how to apply Agile to your life in a free course: http://monthlymethod.com/school/
If you want to stay in touch:
💌 Newsletter (notes on applying Agile, calm productivity, and finding sanity in this hustle-culture obsessed world) - monthlymethod.ck.page/newsletter
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Polina Bee (00:00):
Today, I want to dive into the scrum ritual of
sprint retrospective. I'll tellyou what it is, why it's
important, how it's usually donein scrum teams, how you can
adapt this ritual to your ownprojects where you're just a
team of 1. I'll share the besttips and tricks that they've
learned over the last 10 years.I'll give you a bunch of
(00:20):
examples of what a sprintretrospective can look like. And
at the end, I'll share a morephilosophical view on why to do
a sprint retrospective, whatthis seemingly small ritual can
do in your life.
(00:40):
A sprint retrospective is aregular meeting that is held at
the end of every sprint that isused to discuss what went well
during the previous sprint, whatdidn't go so well, and what can
be improved going forward. It isan opportunity to reflect on the
previous sprint before you jumpinto the next sprint. It is an
(01:01):
opportunity to learn from yourmistakes and to ensure that you
don't repeat them going forward.And here is a shocking part. At
least it was shocking for mewhen I first started working in
an agile team is that in agilephilosophy, we expect that
things will go wrong.
(01:22):
We expect mistakes to happen. Weexpect that some things will not
get done. We expect that somemiscommunication will occur,
some problematic team dynamics.We kind of expect it. And I
remember the first time I I sawthat meeting added to my
(01:43):
calendar, I was like, what?
So after every sprint, we'll gettogether and discuss what went
wrong and how we can improve.This whole idea, I remember it
seems so revolutionary at thetime because where else where
else in your, life, in yourschool, in your university, in
(02:09):
your other working experience,have you had this notion that
we'll plan something, we'llcreate the plan, we'll do our
best, and then we'll meettogether to discuss all the
problems that occur. Noteverywhere else in our life. We
spend so much time and energycreating the perfect plan, The
(02:32):
perfect plan for the next 5years, 10 years. And we spend so
much time creating thisbulletproof plan that the whole
idea that something can go wrongis prohibited within the agile
world.
The way we grow is not byreading books, by hiring smart
(02:56):
and expensive businessconsultants who can help us
create a grand strategy for ourbusiness. We grow and we learn
by first doing something,actually engaging with the
material, with the world, thenquickly stepping back, analyzing
what happened in real world, notin our imaginary scenario of how
(03:22):
things would turn out, butactually no, what actually
happened? How did we behaveduring the settings? What can we
learn about ourselves based onour real actions or inactions?
Agile philosophy is steeped inreality.
That's why I like it so much.It's like it's not steeped in
(03:44):
illusion, in theories, in, someideas and philosophies about how
the world should be. No. It'sbased in reality, in today. How
is the world today?
How are you today? What is yourcharacter, your personality
today, and what do we have towork with? So let's look at a
(04:06):
sprint retrospective and how itworks in a team setting because
agile and scrum originated froma team environment. That's where
I learned that from. I worked indifferent start ups.
So after the sprint is done, theteam gets together, and they try
to answer these three questions.What worked? What didn't? How
(04:29):
can we improve going forward?The other way to do it is to
answer 3 questions.
So, start, stop, continue. Whatshould we start doing? What
should we stop doing? Whatshould we continue doing? The
purpose is not to blame eachother.
It's like, well, Sarah didn't dothis, and John forgot to submit
(04:50):
that. No. The goal is to figureout how we can work better as a
team. So we are not focused somuch on specific projects, on
specific QA, or specific userstory. No.
We are, like, we are analyzingourself as a team. Like, how can
(05:13):
we improve communication goingforward? Because the goal that
happened last sprint, like auser story or a feature or
something like a bug that didn'tget fixed. It's not gonna be the
same work that we need to do inthe next sprint. So next sprint
will have different goals, butthe way we work together, that's
(05:35):
gonna stay pretty much the same,and we need to work on that, on
the environment of the team, onthe way we communicate, on the
way we submit something, in theway things move through the
pipeline.
We focus on the way we work andhow we can improve. And now
let's look at how we cantransform this ritual, this
(05:56):
meeting into our personalprojects where we are just a
team of 1, where we set thegoals for ourselves. Some of
them got done. Some of themmaybe didn't get done. And then
what do we do during sprintretrospective?
What's the goal? And the goal isto figure out how can you
(06:18):
improve your system forachieving goals, for managing
projects, for living your life,like, in general in the next
sprint. The goal is not to beatourselves up for a specific
thing that we didn't finish. Thegoal is to look big picture,
realize what's the underlyingissue, why this specific thing
(06:41):
wasn't accomplished, Why thesethings got accomplished and this
one didn't? So what's thereason?
And then, hopefully, findsomething that can be applicable
to the future goals. We don'twant to be stuck on any specific
goal, task, subtask. We want tohave a general understanding,
(07:02):
some insights about ourselves,our system, our life, our
character, our personality sothat we can improve going
forward. But the beauty of agileis that you become your own
guru, and that's where ithappens. Sprint retrospective is
where you become your own guru.
That's where you build your ownsystem on your own terms. That's
(07:26):
where you tailor it to fitperfectly into your life
conditions, into your familysituation. That's where you
shape it up in a way that worksfor you. You can't find it in
any self help books, YouTubevideos. You have to do it
(07:47):
yourself, and sprintretrospective is where it
happens.
You get to build brick by brickyour own system. How do you
actually get your sprintretrospective done? So your
sprint ends. Then I have mysprint end celebration activity.
(08:08):
It usually happens on eitherFriday or Saturday.
I wrote a blog post about sprintend celebration activities. I'll
leave a link in the description.It has all the whys, all the
examples, everything you need todo. So I have my sprint end
celebration activity, then Itake a day or 2 off. So I
usually do sprint footperspectives on either Sunday
(08:31):
evening or Monday.
Then I just look at my scrumboard and see the snapshot of
where I ended my sprint. Whatgot done? What is still in the
blocked column? What is inprogress? Maybe there are some
things that haven't evenstarted.
Sometimes it happens. If ithelps, take a picture. Take a
(08:51):
picture of your scrum board andthen go for a walk. There's this
concept that if you want to kindof, like, think bigger about
something, you need to be in anenvironment that has high
ceilings or no ceilings at all.Elevate your ceilings and so
your level of thinking elevatesas well.
(09:14):
I think it's called thecathedral effect. Think about
these questions. So what gotaccomplished in the last sprint?
So what actually moved all theway from to do to in progress to
done? I bet you have a bunch ofgoals, subtasks that are in that
(09:34):
column.
And our tendency is to actuallyfocus on the things that we
haven't finished. But, I findthat it's actually better to
focus on the things that gotfinished and analyze the heck
out of it. I would say spend 70%of your time thinking about what
was it about the goals that gotaccomplished that is different
(09:58):
from the things that you didn'tget to accomplish. There are
some underlying common themesabout the things that you get to
accomplish. And if you thinkabout it, that's why you go for
a walk and think about it.
Like, what was it? Like, thatone goal was extremely hard. It
wasn't pleasant. It was long. Itwas tedious, but I got it done.
(10:21):
Why is it? And and then I hadthis goal and that goal and I
accomplished them all. So whatwas it about these goals that
really helped me? So again, 70%of your time, think about the
goals that you did get tofinish. Try to find common
themes that you that you cantransfer to the next sprint.
(10:46):
Then look at the things that youdidn't move all the way to done.
Some things are in progress.Some things are blocked. Some
things are not even started.What is it about those things
that like, is there a commontheme?
What differentiates those thingsfrom the ones that move that got
(11:06):
moved all the way to them?Again, try to make your analysis
transferable to other goals.That actually helps to prevent
any of the self repairing thatusually happens when we focus
too much on what we haven'tdone. Here, try to come to it
with the mindset of I'm justgonna learn something about
(11:30):
myself, about my life, about mygoal setting style that can
improve me going forward. Again,agile is about interacting with
reality.
So you were given a chance to dosomething, to accomplish
specific things, and then somegot done, some didn't get done.
(11:51):
Now you just need to analyze thereality, the real you, your real
life, your real lifecircumstances, your real sprint
capacity, and adapt your systemthat fits better with your
reality. Because your sprintplan was, like especially if
(12:11):
it's your first sprint, it wasbased on some idea that you had
about yourself, about your life,about your work capacity, about
your energy levels. It waspretty much based on some
illusion that you had aboutyourself. Yourself.
Maybe it was a good reflectionof reality. Maybe it was not.
(12:34):
But now you get to actuallyunderstand the reality a little
bit better. And so going intoyour next sprint, the next
sprint plan, you'll be based ona better illusion of yourself,
of the of the one that isbetter, that is more close to
(12:54):
reality. Once you analyze thethings that you finished, the
things that you didn't finish,found some common themes.
Now step back and just, look atyour sprint in general. First of
all, how was your sprintcapacity calculation? Was it
accurate, or did youoverestimate how much time you
(13:15):
can dedicate to your sprintgoals? If it's your 1st sprint,
I bet you overestimated it.Remember when I told you to plan
for no more than 5 hours perweek?
Maybe you do have more time, butI bet that you just
overestimated. And okay. Whatneeds to change going forward?
How much time do you actuallyhave? Now let's look at the you
(13:40):
at your life in general.
Did you enjoy your previousspread? It should feel tight.
Like, I'm not gonna lie. It'snot gonna be like, oh, it was a
vacation mode. No.
It's supposed to be tight. Wehave a cool off week coming,
which we'll talk about in thenext video, but the sprint, it
should be quite an intense, but,like, good intense. It should
(14:05):
feel tight, but not too tightwhere every single like, the
smallest addition to your platewill cause a burnout and
meltdown. In things likepersonal productivity and life
management in general, I thinkthat we should optimize for
longevity and things that we canrepeat sprint after sprint after
sprint. So the sprints, repeatsprint after sprint after
(14:26):
sprint.
So the sprint should feel likesometimes you would have an off
sprint, but in general, youshould design new sprints in a
way that you can do one afteranother after another. Okay?
What added the most stress toyour life in the previous
sprint? What maybe you'verelieved the most stress? So now
(14:50):
where do you do your Sprintperspective?
I, use the same app that I usefor my backlog. It's a notes app
that comes preinstalled on allthe Apple products. I have it
synced between my phone and mylaptop. And I used to create a
different note for each of theSprint perspectives. And then
(15:17):
recently, I realized that themost important thing about
sprint retrospective is notnecessarily the current sprint
retrospective.
It's the repeating themes thatyou keep seeing from one sprint
perspective to another. It'skind of the same ideas with
(15:38):
backlog. Some of the things justneed to age, and they need to
kind of, like, show them selvesmultiple times for you to know
that it's the real thing. AndI'll give you an example of
that. I kept seeing thisrepeating theme of having a of,
like, I call it the deeper why.
(15:59):
Every once in a while, I wouldhave a goal that would stay in
the to do column. So I itwouldn't even get moved to the
in progress column. It wouldstay in the to do column. And
when I analyzed, like, why, whatis it about this specific goal
that is so different from thethings that got moved to the
(16:20):
down call? And oftentimes, itwould be that I don't see a
deeper why.
Like, why I need to do thisthing? It might be something
that I've seen on the YouTubechannel. It might be something
that, like, someone I respectsaid I should do, but I didn't
really understand why. And lastyear, I wrote the entire blog
(16:45):
post, of an example of thisissue, and it was around hosting
a baby shower. I was pregnant atthe time, and this whole idea
that I should host a babyshower.
And it was, like, such adifficult goal for me for no
particular reason. Well, later,I realized it was because I
didn't have a good enough whyfor this goal. That's why it
(17:07):
kept migrating from one sprintto another. I'll leave the link
in the description, and you canread the whole story. But this
theme kept repeating.
It's, like, one goal, like, onesprint, one goal, like, had this
issue, then, like, couplesprints later, another goal had
the same issue. And so nowadays,I just learn to accept, that if
(17:30):
I don't have a clear a crystalclear why for a goal, chances
are I'm not gonna do it. It'snot gonna boof anywhere. It's
it's just gonna be stuck in theto do column. And here's
actually an interesting point.
You'll find out something aboutyourself like this. It's like,
when if I don't understand thewhy, I'm not gonna do it. And
(17:53):
now you're facing this dilemma.You can either work on this
character trait and develop itinto something better, change
it. So it's, comes into, like,character development, and
sometimes it it can be a goodthing.
Or you can say, no. I'm okaywith this character trait, and I
like going forward. I'm just Ijust know this about myself. I'm
(18:15):
gonna embrace it, and I'm notgonna and I'm not gonna put
anything on my scrum board thatdoes not meet this criteria. In
my case, me not understandingwhy in very, very clear details.
And so I chose to embrace itbecause I think it's, good
enough character trait. I Idon't see anything bad about it,
(18:37):
so I'm not gonna change myself.Okay. Coming back. So you want
to have a notes file and just doone perspective on top of
another, and occasionally we'lljust review the previous
perspectives to see if there isa common theme.
And here's an important thing.You don't want to turn a sprint
(18:59):
retrospective into collection ofendless to dos for your next
sprint. You already have abacklog. You already have a
bunch of ideas that are agingwell, that are exciting, and you
want to consider for the nextsprint. Sprint retrospectives
are like, they're very subtlebut very profound.
(19:22):
Because during those sprintretrospectives, you get to
experience some meaningfulinsights about yourself, about
your character, about the wayyou like to work, the way you
are the most productive. Andmost of the time, like, I I
would say, like, don't try tomake a to do out of it. Just try
(19:43):
to, like, go for a walk andjust, like, think that the end
result should be a more clearunderstanding of yourself and
what you should how you shouldyeah. That's a good way to put
it. How you should approach yournext sprint planning, not
necessarily what you should donext sprint.
(20:07):
See the difference? Let me giveyou some examples of, my sprint
retrospective because I loveexamples. That's how I learn. I
know you love examples too. Solet's see.
I just opened my last sprintperspective. Okay. So what
worked? I wrote that having abig promise that I have made to
(20:44):
my subscribers. So there were afew goals related to recording
YouTube videos.
They were difficult. They weretime consuming, tedious. Editing
these videos is no joke. Butsomehow I got them done, all of
them. And when I analyzed why,it was because I made a promise.
(21:05):
Even though there are not a lotof you here, I have a very small
YouTube channel. Doesn't matter.Apparently, that's what I
learned about myself. If Ipromise something, I try to keep
my word, and it motivates me toactually complete these goals.
Again, it's not not necessarilysomething that results in the
immediate to do item, but that'sa very meaningful insight about
(21:28):
myself.
So when I'm thinking about nextsprint calls, I'm like, okay.
Maybe, like, maybe I can promisesomeone something, and that will
motivate me. Who knows? But it'sa good thing to know about
myself. Let me give you anotherexample.
So last print, there were a lotof days where I decided to run a
(21:50):
small experiment. It wasn't apart of my scrum board, but it
was kind of like a lifeexperiment where I left my phone
at home when I went for a walkwith my daughter in the evening.
And it turned out to be the thehighlight of my day every single
day because, I don't know,something and I'm not the type
of person who is on my phone alot, but physically living it at
(22:14):
home and going without it wassuch an awesome experience. I
got to enjoy the sunset, and Iwas like, yeah. I should do more
of that.
Again, doesn't necessarily go onthe scrum board or anything.
It's just like I remember. Okay.If I decide to go for a walk
with my daughter, I better leavemy phone at home. Again, very
(22:37):
subtle, but improves the qualityof my life.
Now on the opposite side, whatdidn't work? So I had the goal
of posting on Reddit. Forcontext, when I started my blog
3 years ago, I posted on Reddit,and it used to work really well.
I, got my first subscribers fromReddit. The goal was very
(23:01):
simple.
Just copy paste all the, like,blog post that I wrote over the
last 3 years on Reddit. Like,you couldn't come up with the
easier goal. But here's thefunny part. All the difficult
goals were completed during thesprint, and this, like, the
easiest goal of all, got stuckin the in progress call. And I'm
(23:25):
like, what's going on?
And so I was so curious becauseit was the easy one. And then I
started digging deeper in it.Like, why is it happening? And I
realized that, well, Reddit haschanged a lot and well, okay.
Reddit was always quite acynical place, but recently, it
(23:45):
became such a toxic environmentwhere, like, no matter what you
post, people just put negativecomments.
And then so that that was onereason. It's just, like, very
toxic environment. The secondreason was that over the last 3
years, a lot of communities thatI used to post in, they're
(24:09):
called subreddits, they changedtheir rules where you are not
allowed to post links. Well, mygoal is to grow my audience, so
I need to kind of, like, have away to show them my website and
my blog and my and my blog andthe YouTube channel. Nowadays,
what you have to do if you wantto do it is to, like, find some
(24:31):
sort of creative way to put yourlink in there.
If I post it on this day andthen I put the link, 2 days
later, I wouldn't get banned. Orif I post and then the and and
include the link in thecomments, then I wouldn't get
banned. And that I realized thatthis whole thing of trying to
(24:55):
cut corners and find the way tobreak rules without being
caught, that was what wasstopping me. And that's again,
I'm kind of, like, facing thisfork in in the road. It's like,
that's a character trait that Ilearned about myself.
Now do I change it, or do Iembrace it? I can go either way.
(25:17):
It it's fine. But for now, Ijust decided to not do anything
because I don't have a lot ofgoals like this, coming up, but
I'll keep seeing if it's arepeated deal. I think I'll end
up embracing it, but for now,there are no immediate actions.
It's just a good observationthat whenever I'm kind of forced
(25:40):
to do something slightlyunethical, slightly on the edge,
I freeze. It stops me. I'm notmaking any progress. I can work
on it or I can embrace it. We'llsee what happens.
I want to give you kind of like,a deeper why, like, an a deeper
(26:02):
level for sprint retrospectivebecause that's the thing that
always grabs me when I'mwatching such videos. And I
think that's the thing that canhelp you actually stick with the
sprint retrospective. Actuallydo it. Because from my
experience, it tends to be themost overlooked scrum ritual.
(26:25):
Sprint planning is veryexciting.
It's, all the new things thatyou get to do as even daily
daily stand up seems exciting.But sprint retrospective kind of
seems kind of sounds verybureaucratic, very mundane, kind
of useless in a way. I want toargue that it's actually the
(26:50):
most important agile ritual. Andthe reason why is because that's
where your life craftsmanshiphappens. The art of living a
good life.
We all want to have it. But howdo we find this art? How do we
cultivate a good life? How do weeven know what a good life is if
(27:12):
we don't stop and reflect on aregular basis? So a lot of us
don't even know what we like,what makes a good day.
A long time ago, I decided thatI would optimize my life for a
regular Tuesday. I want myregular Tuesdays to be good, to
(27:34):
be enjoyable, to be productive,to be calm, to be filled with
beautiful moments, to be filledwith meaning, to be it's like I
I'm optimizing for a regularTuesday. I'm not optimizing for
vacations. I'm not optimizingfor retirement. I'm optimizing
for a regular Tuesday.
(27:54):
And I need to know what makes agood Tuesday or Wednesday or
Thursday. And when you actuallylike, when you live for a period
of time, like a sprint, and thenyou look back and say, what
worked? What was beautiful aboutit? What was nice? What is it
(28:17):
that I can bring into the nextsprint?
I like to look at it as theprocess of curation. Curation is
a function of time. When youtravel, you get to stay in
hotels or Airbnbs, And it's soobvious. The moment you walk
into this hotel, like, you knowthat it's not a hotel that's
(28:40):
been curated. Most of the time,you can see that the person who
decorated this place, they wentto IKEA or I don't know what's
the IKEA for hotels, but let'sfocus on Airbnbs.
They went to IKEA, and then oneday, they bought this whole
thing. A lot of the magazinepictures, that you see are like
(29:02):
that. So it's kind of like it'sit's all done in the span, like,
in a very short amount of time,and you can see it. There is no
soul. There is no heart.
It looks beautiful, but it's notcurated because the it wasn't
the function of time. But whenyou walk into a nicely curated
space, you can feel that it'sbeen curated for years. And I
(29:29):
think we can apply the sameconcept to our lives in general.
And sprint retrospective is thisprocess where you sit down,
while or go for a walk, and youcurate. It's like, what can I
take from this sprint?
Like, one beautiful piece andbring it into the next sprint.
(29:52):
And what can I leave behind? Andso, again, curation is the
function of time. And you kindof embrace this slow process of,
like, I'm taking it, like, onesprint retrospective at a time.
That's the art of living whereyou get to think.
It's like, how can I improve mylife in the future? It's not
(30:15):
based on some theory or thebooks that you just read. It's
based on your previous friend.You get to know you get to learn
yourself. You get to learn aboutyour character.
Life is much more enjoyable whenyou create it with your
personality in mind, where it'slike, yeah, I'm the type of
(30:37):
person who needs to have whoneeds to understand why we do
things. And then all of asudden, the things that you do,
like, they they have meaning,you understand them, and the
overall quality of lifeimproves. I think nowadays, we
are all obsessed about learningnew things. But most of the
(31:03):
time, we just need remindingabout the core timeless
principles. And the reason why Irecommend keeping it in one
document is because you need tobe reminded about some of the
some of your character traits,about some of the things that
just does not work for you orsome of the things that do work
(31:25):
for you, but you keep refusingto accept it.
Sometimes it's much better thanlearning a new thing. That's it
for today. I'll leave all thelinks for the blog post that I
talked about and the link to mynewsletter in the description
notes. If you have any questionsabout this concept, please leave
(31:48):
a comment. I see them all.
I answer them all. But for now,as always, happy sprinting. See
you next time.
Today, I want to dive into the scrum ritual of
sprint retrospective. I'll tellyou what it is, why it's
important, how it's usually donein scrum teams, how you can
adapt this ritual to your ownprojects where you're just a
team of 1. I'll share the besttips and tricks that they've
learned over the last 10 years.I'll give you a bunch of
(00:20):
examples of what a sprintretrospective can look like. And
at the end, I'll share a morephilosophical view on why to do
a sprint retrospective, whatthis seemingly small ritual can
do in your life.
(00:40):
A sprint retrospective is aregular meeting that is held at
the end of every sprint that isused to discuss what went well
during the previous sprint, whatdidn't go so well, and what can
be improved going forward. It isan opportunity to reflect on the
previous sprint before you jumpinto the next sprint. It is an
(01:01):
opportunity to learn from yourmistakes and to ensure that you
don't repeat them going forward.And here is a shocking part. At
least it was shocking for mewhen I first started working in
an agile team is that in agilephilosophy, we expect that
things will go wrong.
(01:22):
We expect mistakes to happen. Weexpect that some things will not
get done. We expect that somemiscommunication will occur,
some problematic team dynamics.We kind of expect it. And I
remember the first time I I sawthat meeting added to my
(01:43):
calendar, I was like, what?
So after every sprint, we'll gettogether and discuss what went
wrong and how we can improve.This whole idea, I remember it
seems so revolutionary at thetime because where else where
else in your, life, in yourschool, in your university, in
(02:09):
your other working experience,have you had this notion that
we'll plan something, we'llcreate the plan, we'll do our
best, and then we'll meettogether to discuss all the
problems that occur. Noteverywhere else in our life. We
spend so much time and energycreating the perfect plan, The
(02:32):
perfect plan for the next 5years, 10 years. And we spend so
much time creating thisbulletproof plan that the whole
idea that something can go wrongis prohibited within the agile
world.
The way we grow is not byreading books, by hiring smart
(02:56):
and expensive businessconsultants who can help us
create a grand strategy for ourbusiness. We grow and we learn
by first doing something,actually engaging with the
material, with the world, thenquickly stepping back, analyzing
what happened in real world, notin our imaginary scenario of how
(03:22):
things would turn out, butactually no, what actually
happened? How did we behaveduring the settings? What can we
learn about ourselves based onour real actions or inactions?
Agile philosophy is steeped inreality.
That's why I like it so much.It's like it's not steeped in
(03:44):
illusion, in theories, in, someideas and philosophies about how
the world should be. No. It'sbased in reality, in today. How
is the world today?
How are you today? What is yourcharacter, your personality
today, and what do we have towork with? So let's look at a
(04:06):
sprint retrospective and how itworks in a team setting because
agile and scrum originated froma team environment. That's where
I learned that from. I worked indifferent start ups.
So after the sprint is done, theteam gets together, and they try
to answer these three questions.What worked? What didn't? How
(04:29):
can we improve going forward?The other way to do it is to
answer 3 questions.
So, start, stop, continue. Whatshould we start doing? What
should we stop doing? Whatshould we continue doing? The
purpose is not to blame eachother.
It's like, well, Sarah didn't dothis, and John forgot to submit
(04:50):
that. No. The goal is to figureout how we can work better as a
team. So we are not focused somuch on specific projects, on
specific QA, or specific userstory. No.
We are, like, we are analyzingourself as a team. Like, how can
(05:13):
we improve communication goingforward? Because the goal that
happened last sprint, like auser story or a feature or
something like a bug that didn'tget fixed. It's not gonna be the
same work that we need to do inthe next sprint. So next sprint
will have different goals, butthe way we work together, that's
(05:35):
gonna stay pretty much the same,and we need to work on that, on
the environment of the team, onthe way we communicate, on the
way we submit something, in theway things move through the
pipeline.
We focus on the way we work andhow we can improve. And now
let's look at how we cantransform this ritual, this
(05:56):
meeting into our personalprojects where we are just a
team of 1, where we set thegoals for ourselves. Some of
them got done. Some of themmaybe didn't get done. And then
what do we do during sprintretrospective?
What's the goal? And the goal isto figure out how can you
(06:18):
improve your system forachieving goals, for managing
projects, for living your life,like, in general in the next
sprint. The goal is not to beatourselves up for a specific
thing that we didn't finish. Thegoal is to look big picture,
realize what's the underlyingissue, why this specific thing
(06:41):
wasn't accomplished, Why thesethings got accomplished and this
one didn't? So what's thereason?
And then, hopefully, findsomething that can be applicable
to the future goals. We don'twant to be stuck on any specific
goal, task, subtask. We want tohave a general understanding,
(07:02):
some insights about ourselves,our system, our life, our
character, our personality sothat we can improve going
forward. But the beauty of agileis that you become your own
guru, and that's where ithappens. Sprint retrospective is
where you become your own guru.
That's where you build your ownsystem on your own terms. That's
(07:26):
where you tailor it to fitperfectly into your life
conditions, into your familysituation. That's where you
shape it up in a way that worksfor you. You can't find it in
any self help books, YouTubevideos. You have to do it
(07:47):
yourself, and sprintretrospective is where it
happens.
You get to build brick by brickyour own system. How do you
actually get your sprintretrospective done? So your
sprint ends. Then I have mysprint end celebration activity.
(08:08):
It usually happens on eitherFriday or Saturday.
I wrote a blog post about sprintend celebration activities. I'll
leave a link in the description.It has all the whys, all the
examples, everything you need todo. So I have my sprint end
celebration activity, then Itake a day or 2 off. So I
usually do sprint footperspectives on either Sunday
(08:31):
evening or Monday.
Then I just look at my scrumboard and see the snapshot of
where I ended my sprint. Whatgot done? What is still in the
blocked column? What is inprogress? Maybe there are some
things that haven't evenstarted.
Sometimes it happens. If ithelps, take a picture. Take a
(08:51):
picture of your scrum board andthen go for a walk. There's this
concept that if you want to kindof, like, think bigger about
something, you need to be in anenvironment that has high
ceilings or no ceilings at all.Elevate your ceilings and so
your level of thinking elevatesas well.
(09:14):
I think it's called thecathedral effect. Think about
these questions. So what gotaccomplished in the last sprint?
So what actually moved all theway from to do to in progress to
done? I bet you have a bunch ofgoals, subtasks that are in that
(09:34):
column.
And our tendency is to actuallyfocus on the things that we
haven't finished. But, I findthat it's actually better to
focus on the things that gotfinished and analyze the heck
out of it. I would say spend 70%of your time thinking about what
was it about the goals that gotaccomplished that is different
(09:58):
from the things that you didn'tget to accomplish. There are
some underlying common themesabout the things that you get to
accomplish. And if you thinkabout it, that's why you go for
a walk and think about it.
Like, what was it? Like, thatone goal was extremely hard. It
wasn't pleasant. It was long. Itwas tedious, but I got it done.
(10:21):
Why is it? And and then I hadthis goal and that goal and I
accomplished them all. So whatwas it about these goals that
really helped me? So again, 70%of your time, think about the
goals that you did get tofinish. Try to find common
themes that you that you cantransfer to the next sprint.
(10:46):
Then look at the things that youdidn't move all the way to done.
Some things are in progress.Some things are blocked. Some
things are not even started.What is it about those things
that like, is there a commontheme?
What differentiates those thingsfrom the ones that move that got
(11:06):
moved all the way to them?Again, try to make your analysis
transferable to other goals.That actually helps to prevent
any of the self repairing thatusually happens when we focus
too much on what we haven'tdone. Here, try to come to it
with the mindset of I'm justgonna learn something about
(11:30):
myself, about my life, about mygoal setting style that can
improve me going forward. Again,agile is about interacting with
reality.
So you were given a chance to dosomething, to accomplish
specific things, and then somegot done, some didn't get done.
(11:51):
Now you just need to analyze thereality, the real you, your real
life, your real lifecircumstances, your real sprint
capacity, and adapt your systemthat fits better with your
reality. Because your sprintplan was, like especially if
(12:11):
it's your first sprint, it wasbased on some idea that you had
about yourself, about your life,about your work capacity, about
your energy levels. It waspretty much based on some
illusion that you had aboutyourself. Yourself.
Maybe it was a good reflectionof reality. Maybe it was not.
(12:34):
But now you get to actuallyunderstand the reality a little
bit better. And so going intoyour next sprint, the next
sprint plan, you'll be based ona better illusion of yourself,
of the of the one that isbetter, that is more close to
(12:54):
reality. Once you analyze thethings that you finished, the
things that you didn't finish,found some common themes.
Now step back and just, look atyour sprint in general. First of
all, how was your sprintcapacity calculation? Was it
accurate, or did youoverestimate how much time you
(13:15):
can dedicate to your sprintgoals? If it's your 1st sprint,
I bet you overestimated it.Remember when I told you to plan
for no more than 5 hours perweek?
Maybe you do have more time, butI bet that you just
overestimated. And okay. Whatneeds to change going forward?
How much time do you actuallyhave? Now let's look at the you
(13:40):
at your life in general.
Did you enjoy your previousspread? It should feel tight.
Like, I'm not gonna lie. It'snot gonna be like, oh, it was a
vacation mode. No.
It's supposed to be tight. Wehave a cool off week coming,
which we'll talk about in thenext video, but the sprint, it
should be quite an intense, but,like, good intense. It should
(14:05):
feel tight, but not too tightwhere every single like, the
smallest addition to your platewill cause a burnout and
meltdown. In things likepersonal productivity and life
management in general, I thinkthat we should optimize for
longevity and things that we canrepeat sprint after sprint after
sprint. So the sprints, repeatsprint after sprint after
(14:26):
sprint.
So the sprint should feel likesometimes you would have an off
sprint, but in general, youshould design new sprints in a
way that you can do one afteranother after another. Okay?
What added the most stress toyour life in the previous
sprint? What maybe you'verelieved the most stress? So now
(14:50):
where do you do your Sprintperspective?
I, use the same app that I usefor my backlog. It's a notes app
that comes preinstalled on allthe Apple products. I have it
synced between my phone and mylaptop. And I used to create a
different note for each of theSprint perspectives. And then
(15:17):
recently, I realized that themost important thing about
sprint retrospective is notnecessarily the current sprint
retrospective.
It's the repeating themes thatyou keep seeing from one sprint
perspective to another. It'skind of the same ideas with
(15:38):
backlog. Some of the things justneed to age, and they need to
kind of, like, show them selvesmultiple times for you to know
that it's the real thing. AndI'll give you an example of
that. I kept seeing thisrepeating theme of having a of,
like, I call it the deeper why.
(15:59):
Every once in a while, I wouldhave a goal that would stay in
the to do column. So I itwouldn't even get moved to the
in progress column. It wouldstay in the to do column. And
when I analyzed, like, why, whatis it about this specific goal
that is so different from thethings that got moved to the
(16:20):
down call? And oftentimes, itwould be that I don't see a
deeper why.
Like, why I need to do thisthing? It might be something
that I've seen on the YouTubechannel. It might be something
that, like, someone I respectsaid I should do, but I didn't
really understand why. And lastyear, I wrote the entire blog
(16:45):
post, of an example of thisissue, and it was around hosting
a baby shower. I was pregnant atthe time, and this whole idea
that I should host a babyshower.
And it was, like, such adifficult goal for me for no
particular reason. Well, later,I realized it was because I
didn't have a good enough whyfor this goal. That's why it
(17:07):
kept migrating from one sprintto another. I'll leave the link
in the description, and you canread the whole story. But this
theme kept repeating.
It's, like, one goal, like, onesprint, one goal, like, had this
issue, then, like, couplesprints later, another goal had
the same issue. And so nowadays,I just learn to accept, that if
(17:30):
I don't have a clear a crystalclear why for a goal, chances
are I'm not gonna do it. It'snot gonna boof anywhere. It's
it's just gonna be stuck in theto do column. And here's
actually an interesting point.
You'll find out something aboutyourself like this. It's like,
when if I don't understand thewhy, I'm not gonna do it. And
(17:53):
now you're facing this dilemma.You can either work on this
character trait and develop itinto something better, change
it. So it's, comes into, like,character development, and
sometimes it it can be a goodthing.
Or you can say, no. I'm okaywith this character trait, and I
like going forward. I'm just Ijust know this about myself. I'm
(18:15):
gonna embrace it, and I'm notgonna and I'm not gonna put
anything on my scrum board thatdoes not meet this criteria. In
my case, me not understandingwhy in very, very clear details.
And so I chose to embrace itbecause I think it's, good
enough character trait. I Idon't see anything bad about it,
(18:37):
so I'm not gonna change myself.Okay. Coming back. So you want
to have a notes file and just doone perspective on top of
another, and occasionally we'lljust review the previous
perspectives to see if there isa common theme.
And here's an important thing.You don't want to turn a sprint
(18:59):
retrospective into collection ofendless to dos for your next
sprint. You already have abacklog. You already have a
bunch of ideas that are agingwell, that are exciting, and you
want to consider for the nextsprint. Sprint retrospectives
are like, they're very subtlebut very profound.
(19:22):
Because during those sprintretrospectives, you get to
experience some meaningfulinsights about yourself, about
your character, about the wayyou like to work, the way you
are the most productive. Andmost of the time, like, I I
would say, like, don't try tomake a to do out of it. Just try
(19:43):
to, like, go for a walk andjust, like, think that the end
result should be a more clearunderstanding of yourself and
what you should how you shouldyeah. That's a good way to put
it. How you should approach yournext sprint planning, not
necessarily what you should donext sprint.
(20:07):
See the difference? Let me giveyou some examples of, my sprint
retrospective because I loveexamples. That's how I learn. I
know you love examples too. Solet's see.
I just opened my last sprintperspective. Okay. So what
worked? I wrote that having abig promise that I have made to
(20:44):
my subscribers. So there were afew goals related to recording
YouTube videos.
They were difficult. They weretime consuming, tedious. Editing
these videos is no joke. Butsomehow I got them done, all of
them. And when I analyzed why,it was because I made a promise.
(21:05):
Even though there are not a lotof you here, I have a very small
YouTube channel. Doesn't matter.Apparently, that's what I
learned about myself. If Ipromise something, I try to keep
my word, and it motivates me toactually complete these goals.
Again, it's not not necessarilysomething that results in the
immediate to do item, but that'sa very meaningful insight about
(21:28):
myself.
So when I'm thinking about nextsprint calls, I'm like, okay.
Maybe, like, maybe I can promisesomeone something, and that will
motivate me. Who knows? But it'sa good thing to know about
myself. Let me give you anotherexample.
So last print, there were a lotof days where I decided to run a
(21:50):
small experiment. It wasn't apart of my scrum board, but it
was kind of like a lifeexperiment where I left my phone
at home when I went for a walkwith my daughter in the evening.
And it turned out to be the thehighlight of my day every single
day because, I don't know,something and I'm not the type
of person who is on my phone alot, but physically living it at
(22:14):
home and going without it wassuch an awesome experience. I
got to enjoy the sunset, and Iwas like, yeah. I should do more
of that.
Again, doesn't necessarily go onthe scrum board or anything.
It's just like I remember. Okay.If I decide to go for a walk
with my daughter, I better leavemy phone at home. Again, very
(22:37):
subtle, but improves the qualityof my life.
Now on the opposite side, whatdidn't work? So I had the goal
of posting on Reddit. Forcontext, when I started my blog
3 years ago, I posted on Reddit,and it used to work really well.
I, got my first subscribers fromReddit. The goal was very
(23:01):
simple.
Just copy paste all the, like,blog post that I wrote over the
last 3 years on Reddit. Like,you couldn't come up with the
easier goal. But here's thefunny part. All the difficult
goals were completed during thesprint, and this, like, the
easiest goal of all, got stuckin the in progress call. And I'm
(23:25):
like, what's going on?
And so I was so curious becauseit was the easy one. And then I
started digging deeper in it.Like, why is it happening? And I
realized that, well, Reddit haschanged a lot and well, okay.
Reddit was always quite acynical place, but recently, it
(23:45):
became such a toxic environmentwhere, like, no matter what you
post, people just put negativecomments.
And then so that that was onereason. It's just, like, very
toxic environment. The secondreason was that over the last 3
years, a lot of communities thatI used to post in, they're
(24:09):
called subreddits, they changedtheir rules where you are not
allowed to post links. Well, mygoal is to grow my audience, so
I need to kind of, like, have away to show them my website and
my blog and my and my blog andthe YouTube channel. Nowadays,
what you have to do if you wantto do it is to, like, find some
(24:31):
sort of creative way to put yourlink in there.
If I post it on this day andthen I put the link, 2 days
later, I wouldn't get banned. Orif I post and then the and and
include the link in thecomments, then I wouldn't get
banned. And that I realized thatthis whole thing of trying to
(24:55):
cut corners and find the way tobreak rules without being
caught, that was what wasstopping me. And that's again,
I'm kind of, like, facing thisfork in in the road. It's like,
that's a character trait that Ilearned about myself.
Now do I change it, or do Iembrace it? I can go either way.
(25:17):
It it's fine. But for now, Ijust decided to not do anything
because I don't have a lot ofgoals like this, coming up, but
I'll keep seeing if it's arepeated deal. I think I'll end
up embracing it, but for now,there are no immediate actions.
It's just a good observationthat whenever I'm kind of forced
(25:40):
to do something slightlyunethical, slightly on the edge,
I freeze. It stops me. I'm notmaking any progress. I can work
on it or I can embrace it. We'llsee what happens.
I want to give you kind of like,a deeper why, like, an a deeper
(26:02):
level for sprint retrospectivebecause that's the thing that
always grabs me when I'mwatching such videos. And I
think that's the thing that canhelp you actually stick with the
sprint retrospective. Actuallydo it. Because from my
experience, it tends to be themost overlooked scrum ritual.
(26:25):
Sprint planning is veryexciting.
It's, all the new things thatyou get to do as even daily
daily stand up seems exciting.But sprint retrospective kind of
seems kind of sounds verybureaucratic, very mundane, kind
of useless in a way. I want toargue that it's actually the
(26:50):
most important agile ritual. Andthe reason why is because that's
where your life craftsmanshiphappens. The art of living a
good life.
We all want to have it. But howdo we find this art? How do we
cultivate a good life? How do weeven know what a good life is if
(27:12):
we don't stop and reflect on aregular basis? So a lot of us
don't even know what we like,what makes a good day.
A long time ago, I decided thatI would optimize my life for a
regular Tuesday. I want myregular Tuesdays to be good, to
(27:34):
be enjoyable, to be productive,to be calm, to be filled with
beautiful moments, to be filledwith meaning, to be it's like I
I'm optimizing for a regularTuesday. I'm not optimizing for
vacations. I'm not optimizingfor retirement. I'm optimizing
for a regular Tuesday.
(27:54):
And I need to know what makes agood Tuesday or Wednesday or
Thursday. And when you actuallylike, when you live for a period
of time, like a sprint, and thenyou look back and say, what
worked? What was beautiful aboutit? What was nice? What is it
(28:17):
that I can bring into the nextsprint?
I like to look at it as theprocess of curation. Curation is
a function of time. When youtravel, you get to stay in
hotels or Airbnbs, And it's soobvious. The moment you walk
into this hotel, like, you knowthat it's not a hotel that's
(28:40):
been curated. Most of the time,you can see that the person who
decorated this place, they wentto IKEA or I don't know what's
the IKEA for hotels, but let'sfocus on Airbnbs.
They went to IKEA, and then oneday, they bought this whole
thing. A lot of the magazinepictures, that you see are like
(29:02):
that. So it's kind of like it'sit's all done in the span, like,
in a very short amount of time,and you can see it. There is no
soul. There is no heart.
It looks beautiful, but it's notcurated because the it wasn't
the function of time. But whenyou walk into a nicely curated
space, you can feel that it'sbeen curated for years. And I
(29:29):
think we can apply the sameconcept to our lives in general.
And sprint retrospective is thisprocess where you sit down,
while or go for a walk, and youcurate. It's like, what can I
take from this sprint?
Like, one beautiful piece andbring it into the next sprint.
(29:52):
And what can I leave behind? Andso, again, curation is the
function of time. And you kindof embrace this slow process of,
like, I'm taking it, like, onesprint retrospective at a time.
That's the art of living whereyou get to think.
It's like, how can I improve mylife in the future? It's not
(30:15):
based on some theory or thebooks that you just read. It's
based on your previous friend.You get to know you get to learn
yourself. You get to learn aboutyour character.
Life is much more enjoyable whenyou create it with your
personality in mind, where it'slike, yeah, I'm the type of
(30:37):
person who needs to have whoneeds to understand why we do
things. And then all of asudden, the things that you do,
like, they they have meaning,you understand them, and the
overall quality of lifeimproves. I think nowadays, we
are all obsessed about learningnew things. But most of the
(31:03):
time, we just need remindingabout the core timeless
principles. And the reason why Irecommend keeping it in one
document is because you need tobe reminded about some of the
some of your character traits,about some of the things that
just does not work for you orsome of the things that do work
(31:25):
for you, but you keep refusingto accept it.
Sometimes it's much better thanlearning a new thing. That's it
for today. I'll leave all thelinks for the blog post that I
talked about and the link to mynewsletter in the description
notes. If you have any questionsabout this concept, please leave
(31:48):
a comment. I see them all.
I answer them all. But for now,as always, happy sprinting. See
you next time.
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