There is a big continuous improvement drive at work and the simplest tool for continuous improvement is the retrospective. It’s the reason we do one every sprint. So we can find out what is stopping us from doing things better. It’s so we improving things in our environments bit by bit. As a SCRUM master, I find Retrospectives as one of the most important tools to master.

But haven’t you found that after a few they end up being nothing more than a complaint session, or they simply don’t return anything to the team. No return on investment soon breeds apathy. The team just sit in the meeting because they have to do it because the SCRUM master said so. This is the time to do something counter-intuitive. Have a retrospective on the retrospective. Keep it short and try and get an action from it. Soon you’ll see why. It’s something you are doing in the retrospective making them ineffective or the same action appear unresolved over and over. And for the long-term improvement of the team, you’ll have to resolve them.

Try to do one today.

How do we as scrum masters help keep the team focused?