The Retrospective Handbook
$19.99
Minimum price
$24.99
Suggested price

The Retrospective Handbook

A guide for agile teams

About the Book

Are you running retrospectives regularly? Perhaps you run retrospectives once a week, or fortnightly. Do you feel like you could be getting more out of your retrospectives and fuelling continuous improvement in your teams? You may already find retrospectives valuable, but suspect there are ways of making them better.

This book condenses down over eight years of experience working with the retrospective practice within the context of real agile teams. It offers you practical advice on how to make your retrospectives even more effective including topics such as:

  • Best methods to prepare for a retrospective
  • Picking just the right materials
  • Facilitating retrospectives with ease
  • Dealing with common retrospective smells
  • Retrospectives in different contexts including distributed, large and small groups
  • A checklist for preparation
  • Ensuring retrospectives result in change

Read the Foreword (available in the preview) by Agile Retrospectives's author, Diana Larsen to see why this book is for you.

Hard copies now available

Prefer a hard copy (paper version) or want to give one away as a gift? Order one online at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

About the Author

Patrick Kua
Patrick Kua

Patrick Kua is the CTO of the mobile bank N26 (Berlin, Germany), where he is building the engineering group that will change modern retail banking for people like you and me. Formerly a Principal Technical Consultant at ThoughtWorks, he is the author of three books, The Retrospective Handbook, Talking with Tech Leads and most recently, Building Evolutionary Architectures. Patrick is a frequent conference speaker, blogger and is passionate about bringing a balanced focus between people, organisations and technology. You can find me blogging at http://www.thekua.com/atwork or on twitter @patkua

Bundles that include this book

11 Books
$194.94
Bought separately
$80.00
Bundle Price
$75.86
Bought separately
$39.46
Bundle Price

Table of Contents

  • Foreword by Diana Larsen
  • Preface
  • Acknowledgements
  • Introduction
  • 1 Retrospective Fundamentals
  • 1.1 A Short History of Retrospectives
  • 1.2 The Key Questions
  • 1.3 A Simple Framework
  • 1.4 Where to Find Activities
  • 1.5 The Importance of the Prime Directive
  • 1.6 The Right Context for Retrospectives
  • 1.7 Complementary Improvement Practices
  • 2 Preparing for Retrospectives
  • 2.1 Set Aside Time to Prepare
  • 2.2 Find an Appropriate Space
  • 2.3 Choose the Right Materials
  • 2.4 Prepare the Space
  • 2.5 Right People, Right Place, Right Time
  • 2.6 A Preparation Checklist
  • 3 Facilitating Retrospectives
  • 3.1 Independent or Non-Independent
  • 3.2 Conflict of Interest
  • 3.3 Be Decisive
  • 3.4 Develop Your Facilitation Skills
  • 3.5 Form Effective Actions
  • 3.6 Spread the Retrospective Word
  • 4 First-Time Facilitation Tips
  • 4.1 Encourage Physical Presence
  • 4.2 Seek Equal Participation
  • 4.3 Avoid Doing All the Work Yourself
  • 4.4 Confirm Your Understanding
  • 4.5 Rephrase Blaming Statements
  • 4.6 Keep the Focus on the Current Phase
  • 4.7 Use a Visual Agenda
  • 4.8 Use a Wide Variety of Questions
  • 4.9 Observe Body Language
  • 4.10 Observe Yourself
  • 5 Distributed Retrospectives
  • 5.1 Distributed Challenges
  • 5.2 Make the Most of It
  • 5.3 Focus First on Building Relationships
  • 5.4 Use Video Cameras at All Ends
  • 5.5 People Tokens in Remote Locations
  • 5.6 Prevent Remote People ‘Going Dark’
  • 5.7 Faces for Everyone
  • 5.8 Use Remote Facilitators
  • 5.9 Collect Input Before the Meeting
  • 5.10 Use Online Tools to Share
  • 5.11 Agree on a Signalling System
  • 5.12 Invest in a ‘Technographer’
  • 5.13 Run Remote Working Groups
  • 5.14 Remote Proxies as Representatives
  • 5.15 Simple Tips for Remote Communication
  • 5.16 Be Aware of Cultural Dimensions
  • 5.17 Distributed Retrospectives Are Always Harder
  • 6 Other Flavours of Retrospectives
  • 6.1 Futurespectives
  • 6.2 Continuous Retrospectives
  • 6.3 Very Big Retrospectives
  • 6.4 Very Small Retrospectives
  • 6.5 Appreciative Inquiry Retrospectives
  • 6.6 Solution-Focused Goal-Driven Retrospectives
  • 6.7 Dialogue Sheet Retrospectives
  • 7 After the Retrospective
  • 7.1 Capture the Retrospective Output
  • 7.2 Make Actions Visible
  • 7.3 Check Actions During Stand-Ups
  • 7.4 Actively Chase Action Owners
  • 7.5 Schedule Follow-Up Sessions
  • 7.6 Schedule the Next Retrospective
  • 7.7 Share With Other Teams
  • 8 Common Retrospective Smells
  • 8.1 All Talk, No Action
  • 8.2 All Action, No Talk
  • 8.3 Conversation Too Controlled
  • 8.4 Too Repetitive
  • 8.5 No Preparation
  • 8.6 Too Many Goals
  • 8.7 Poorly Formed Actions
  • 8.8 One Person Owns All Actions
  • 9 Keeping Retrospectives Fresh
  • 9.1 Bring Food
  • 9.2 Ask Different Questions
  • 9.3 Run an Energiser
  • 9.4 Vary the Activities
  • 9.5 Change the Environment
  • 9.6 Appeal To Other Skillsets
  • 9.7 Make It Less Formal
  • 10 Concluding
  • 10.1 Powerful Results
  • 10.2 Constant Change
  • Appendix A: Retrospective Activities
  • Books
  • Websites
  • Appendix B: Resources to Becoming a Better Facilitator
  • Facilitation Resources
  • Resources on Related Topics
  • Appendix C: References

The Leanpub 60 Day 100% Happiness Guarantee

Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.

Now, this is technically risky for us, since you'll have the book or course files either way. But we're so confident in our products and services, and in our authors and readers, that we're happy to offer a full money back guarantee for everything we sell.

You can only find out how good something is by trying it, and because of our 100% money back guarantee there's literally no risk to do so!

So, there's no reason not to click the Add to Cart button, is there?

See full terms...

Earn $8 on a $10 Purchase, and $16 on a $20 Purchase

We pay 80% royalties on purchases of $7.99 or more, and 80% royalties minus a 50 cent flat fee on purchases between $0.99 and $7.98. You earn $8 on a $10 sale, and $16 on a $20 sale. So, if we sell 5000 non-refunded copies of your book for $20, you'll earn $80,000.

(Yes, some authors have already earned much more than that on Leanpub.)

In fact, authors have earnedover $13 millionwriting, publishing and selling on Leanpub.

Learn more about writing on Leanpub

Free Updates. DRM Free.

If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).

Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.

Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.

Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them

Write and Publish on Leanpub

You can use Leanpub to easily write, publish and sell in-progress and completed ebooks and online courses!

Leanpub is a powerful platform for serious authors, combining a simple, elegant writing and publishing workflow with a store focused on selling in-progress ebooks.

Leanpub is a magical typewriter for authors: just write in plain text, and to publish your ebook, just click a button. (Or, if you are producing your ebook your own way, you can even upload your own PDF and/or EPUB files and then publish with one click!) It really is that easy.

Learn more about writing on Leanpub