Increasing Business and Technology Throughput

Agile development emphasizes continuous improvement along the lines of the Japanese concept of Kaizen which focuses on improving the entire process and its end results.  One of the most important aspects of these Agile techniques is the Retrospective.  Retrospectives are intended to gather the entire team (including product owners and even sponsors) together to discuss what went well and what could be improved for the next iteration.  The intent is to provide a safe opportunity for all team members to share their perspective on what's working and what's not.  For most agile project participants this can be very empowering and it introduces a powerful communication and collaboration technique to enable teams to increase productivity and take pride in their work.

Unfortunately, most teams get little direction or support beyond the idea of having a retrospective at the end of their iterations.  Generally, they start well but over several iterations attendance of product owners start to dwindle, many of the same problems get revisited every retrospective, the sessions either become rife with highly charged/emotional discussions or get bogged down in unactionable or questionable value problem areas ("We need more snack food in the room").

A big reason for these problems is that the teams don't receive any guidance or support in running their retrospectives.  Here are some tips on keeping your retrospectives working smoothly:

1. Establish a facilitator for your retrospective: This person should have experience and training in facilitation and understand how to maintain the right level of energy in a retrospective.  There is a wealth of information on effective facilitation techniques but a good book on the topic is Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Larsen/Darby and Schwaber.  You can review a Google Tech Talk presentation on YouTube.
2. Give your retrospectives 'themes':  After the initial excitement of the first few iterations most teams can benefit from having a focus area for their retrospective.  Topics like "How Can We Improve Our Teamwork" or "How Can We Increase Code Quality" help focus discussions and can break out of the 'We've discussed this before" syndrome that can accompany retrospectives.
3. Get participants engaged:  One key to re-energize your retrospectives is to get participants moving and participating.  Have team members write sticky notes with improvement suggestions and put them on whiteboards.  Have the team spend time moving the stickies into categories.  Use the Fist of Five to facilitate voting on these techniques.
4. Change things up:  If your retrospectives are losing their energy and benefits, try moving them to a different location.  Holding one outside on a nice day or have a Build a Sundae theme with some ice-cream and condiments can re-establish interest levels.

These are only a starting point for re-energizing your retrospective and there are lots of good blogs like David McLean's which offer advice and suggestions. I'd be interested in hearing how others are managing their retrospectives too.