Retrospectives Antipatterns

Improve Every Retrospective! Real Solutions for Every Team Leader, Facilitator, and Participant

“. . . Aino has shared a robust, curated list of antipatterns and how to avoid them. . . . And she has shared so much more than tips and techniques. You will find a gold mine--with precious nuggets, including her personal experiences, effective facilitation resources, and pointers for extracting yourself and your team when you’re stuck.”
--From the Foreword by Diana Larsen, co-author, Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great

Retrospectives are indispensable for continuous learning and improvement in Lean, Agile, DevOps, and other contexts, but most of us have suffered through at least one retrospective that was a waste of time, or worse. Now, leading agile coach Aino Vonge Corry identifies 24 reasons that retrospectives fail and shows how to overcome each of them.

Using the familiar “patterns” approach, Retrospectives Antipatterns introduces antipatterns related to structure, planning, people, distributed teams, and more. Corry shares traps she’s encountered and mistakes she’s made over more than a decade of leading retrospectives and then presents proven solutions. With her insights and guidance, you can run enjoyable retrospectives that deliver concrete improvements and real value--or at the very least recognize when you are making the same mistake as the author!

Create a common language, actionable solutions, and proven plans for solving the retrospective problems you’ll encounter most often
Recognize symptoms, assess tradeoffs, and refactor your current situation into something better
Plan more effectively: decide who should attend and facilitate, when to schedule your retrospective, and how much time to set aside
Handle “people” problems: deal with negativity, silence, distrust, disillusionment, loudmouths, and cultural differences
Facilitate better “virtual” retrospectives, with tips for online retrospectives included in each antipattern

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Aino Corry, independent consultant, has facilitated retrospectives for over a decade, written about facilitation for almost as long, and spoken widely and taught courses worldwide on the subject. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science with a focus on design patterns in object-oriented design and OO language constructs: “pattern-glasses” that have been invaluable in formulating experience for others to learn from. She has taught for over two decades, in both university and industry settings.

Part I: The Structural Antipatterns 1. The Wheel of Fortune 2. Prime Directive Ignorance 3. In the Soup 4. Broken by Breaking News 5. Spend Time on Smalltalk 6. Suffocating Slowly 7. Unfruitful Democracy
Part II: The Planning Antipatterns 8. Team, Really? 9. Do It Yourself 10. Death by Postponement 11. Let’s Get It Over With
Part III: The People Antipatterns 12. The Disillusioned Facilitator 13. The Loudmouth 14. The Silent One 15. The Negative One 16. The Negative Team 17. The Curious Manager 18. Lack of Trust
Part IV: The Distributed Antipatterns 19. Disregard of Preparation 20. Cultures in Retrospectives 21. Dead Silent 22. The Political Vote

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Retrospectives Antipatterns

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials