The Sprint Retrospective is a reflection event that occurs at the end of each Sprint. It is for the entire Scrum team which includes the Product Owner, Developers, and ScrumMaster to inspect how they are operating and then come up with a continuous improvement plan to adapt and become more effective as a team and as an organization.
In the Sprint Retrospective, the team might consider their team dynamics, relationships, processes, tools, or their Definition of Done, and then come up with action items to take on to improve. There are many types of retrospectives, the most basic is referred to as pluses and deltas where the team looks at what went well and what can be improved and then takes on improvement action items accordingly. The action items from the retrospective go into the next Sprint backlog as tasks for the team to work on to become more effective. This means that in the next Sprint, the team needs to allocate some time for continuous improvement initiatives that came out of the retrospective.
The Sprint Retrospective is the last event of the Sprint and is timeboxed to 3 hours for a 4-week Sprint and 1.5 hours for a 2-week Sprint and so on.
And that’s the Sprint Retrospective. A timeboxed event that occurs at the very end of the Sprint for the Scrum team to inspect their processes and adapt to continuously improve and become a more effective team and organization.
For more details, sign up for an upcoming foundational ScrumMaster® (CSM®) class or a Certified Product Owner® (CSPO®) class or Certified Scrum Developer® (CSD®) class.
Next check out the entire Scrum in a Nutshell series:
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