Skipping Retrospectives? — Making Your Scrum Work #17

TL; DR: Skipping Retrospectives?

There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Given that Scrum is a framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. One area where Scrum’s nature of being intentionally incomplete causes issues regularly is whether Scrum teams shall stick to the event schedule even if the team’s life is uneventful? For example, is skipping Retrospectives okay?

Join me and delve into the consequences of skipping Retrospectives in less than 90 seconds.

Skipping Retrospectives — Making Your Scrum Work #17 – Age-of-Product.com

🗳 Update: Join the poll on skipping Retrospectives on LinkedIn!

🗞 Shall I notify you about articles like this one? Awesome! You can sign up here for the ‘Food for Agile Thought’ newsletter and join 32,000-plus subscribers.

🎓 Join Stefan in one of his upcoming Professional Scrum training classes!

Hands-on Agile #33: Adapt How You Lead for Agile Success—Johanna Rothman — August 10, 2021

📅 Join us on August 10, 2021: Hands-on Agile #33: Adapt How You Lead for Agile Success—Johanna Rothman.

Scrum Events and Skipping Retrospectives According to the Scrum Guide

There are many references to events in general and Retrospectives in particular in the Scrum Guide 2020:

  • Page 7: Each event in Scrum is a formal opportunity to inspect and adapt Scrum artifacts.
  • Page 7: [Scrum] events are specifically designed to enable the transparency required.
  • Page 7: Failure to operate any events as prescribed results in lost opportunities to inspect and adapt.
  • Page 7: Events are used in Scrum to create regularity and to minimize the need for meetings not defined in Scrum.
  • Page 7: Optimally, all events are held at the same time and place to reduce complexity.
  • Page 10: The purpose of the Sprint Retrospective is to plan ways to increase quality and effectiveness.
  • Page 10: The Scrum Team inspects how the last Sprint went with regards to individuals, interactions, processes, tools, and their Definition of Done.
  • Page 10: [During the Sprint Retrospective,] assumptions that led [inspected elements] astray are identified and their origins explored.
  • Page 10: The Scrum Team discusses what went well during the Sprint, what problems it encountered, and how those problems were (or were not) solved.
  • Page 10: The Scrum Team identifies the most helpful changes to improve its effectiveness.
  • Page 10: The most impactful improvements are addressed as soon as possible. They may even be added to the Sprint Backlog for the next Sprint.
  • Page 10: The Sprint Retrospective concludes the Sprint.
  • Page 10: [The Sprint Retrospective] is timeboxed to a maximum of three hours for a one-month Sprint. For shorter Sprints, the event is usually shorter.

Source: Scrum Guide 2020. (The aggregation is taken from the Scrum Guide 2020 Reordered.)

Every Scrum event is an opportunity for inspection and adaptation, two of the three pillars upon which empiricism rests. Every Scrum event is hence essential, and skipping Retrospectives — or any other event — is, therefore, not an option.

Why Teams May Consider Not Having Retrospectives

In my experience, Scrum teams consider not having Retrospectives for two reasons:

  1. #NoRetro at all: There is no Retrospective as the Scrum team believes there is nothing to improve. (My two cents: There is no such thing as an agile Nirwana where everything is just perfect. As people say: becoming agile is a journey, not a destination, and there is always something to improve. Probably, your Scrum team is not trying hard enough to identify areas of improvement. Presumably, they have become complacent, shying away from having difficult discussions within the Scrum team and beyond. Remember: Professionals hold each other accountable; skipping Retrospectives won’t get you to that proficiency level.)
  2. Using the Retrospective as a dispensable Sprint buffer: The Scrum team cancels Retrospectives if more time is needed to accomplish the Sprint Goal. (Utilizing the Retrospective as a Sprint emergency reserve is a common sign of cargo cult agile. I believe it is even a worse anti-pattern than not having a Retrospective because there is presumably nothing to improve. However, randomly canceling the Retrospective to meet a possibly unachievable Sprint Goal signifies that the team does not understand basic agile principles, such as continuous improvement. Moreover, an additional 60 minutes are unlikely to move the needle in any meaningful manner. Therefore, if the Scrum team repeatedly does not meet a Sprint Goal, it should inspect what is happening here. Guess which Scrum event is designed for that purpose?)

Cannot see the form?
Please click here

Skipping Retrospectives — Conclusion

Every Scrum event is an opportunity for inspection and adaptation; next to transparency, the two pillars upon which empiricism rests. Every Scrum event is hence essential, and skipping it is not an option. When everything seems to be perfect, you are not trying hard enough to have difficult conversations. And not investing an hour or so as a team to continuously improve just demonstrates that you are at a very early stage of your journey. Professionals hold each other accountable; you’re an amateur at best in comparison.

Have you met a Scrum team skipping Retrospectives? Please share your learnings with us in the comments.

✋ Do Not Miss Out: Join the 10,000-plus Strong ‘Hands-on Agile’ Slack Team

I invite you to join the “Hands-on Agile” Slack team and enjoy the benefits of a fast-growing, vibrant community of agile practitioners from around the world.

Join the Hands-on Agile Slack Group, Learn more about the Developers Code Fallacy

If you like to join now all you have to do now is provide your credentials via this Google form, and I will sign you up. By the way, it’s free.

📖 Related Posts

Scrum First Principles — How to Elon Musk the Scrum Guide

The Blame Game Retrospective — Making Your Scrum Work #6

Three Essential Agile Failure Patterns in 7:31 Minutes—Making Your Scrum Work #12

21 Sprint Retrospective Anti-Patterns Impeding Scrum Teams

Data-Informed Retrospectives

Download the Scrum Anti-Patterns Guide for free.

📅 Scrum Training Classes, Workshops, and Events

You can secure your seat for Scrum training classes, workshops, and meetups directly by following the corresponding link in the table below:

Date Class and Language City Price
🖥 💯 🇩🇪 September 26-29, 2023 GUARANTEED: Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1.189 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 October 4, 2023 GUARANTEED: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Training (PSFS; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €749 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 October 10, 2023 GUARANTEED: Hands-on Agile #54: Product Backlog Management Traps — David Pereira (English; Live Virtual Meetup) Live Virtual Class FREE
🖥 🇩🇪 October 30-31, 2023 Professional Scrum Master (Advanced) Training (PSM II; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1.189 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇩🇪 November 1-2, 2023 GUARANTEED: Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1.189 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 November 8, 2023 GUARANTEED: Hands-on Agile #55: Designing Agile Ecosystems with Org Topologies™ w/ Alexey Krivitsky and Roland Flemm (English; Live Virtual Meetup) Live Virtual Class FREE
🖥 🇩🇪 November 21-24, 2023 Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1.189 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 💯 🇬🇧 November 28, 2023 GUARANTEED: Professional Scrum Facilitation Skills Training (PSFS; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €749 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 🇩🇪 December 11-12, 2023 Professional Scrum Master Training (PSM I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1.189 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 🇩🇪 December 13-14, 2023 Professional Scrum Product Owner Training (PSPO I; German; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1.189 incl. 19% VAT
🖥 🇬🇧 December 18-19, 2023 Professional Scrum Master (Advanced) Training (PSM II; English; Live Virtual Class) Live Virtual Class €1.189 incl. 19% VAT

See all upcoming classes here.

Professional Scrum Training by PST Stefan Wolpers, Berlin  Product People

You can book your seat for the training directly by following the corresponding links to the ticket shop. If the procurement process of your organization requires a different purchasing process, please contact Berlin Product People GmbH directly.

If you like to learn more about how to avoid skipping Retrospectives, consider attending Stefan’s Professional Scrum Master classes.

Find this content useful? Share it with your friends!

One thought on “Skipping Retrospectives? — Making Your Scrum Work #17”

  1. Your email announcing this post says at the very beginning: “Can a Scrum team decide to skip the Sprint Retrospective?” Of course they can. A team/group of people can decide to do whatever they want. Isn’t the actual question: “Should a Scrum team decide to skip the Sprint Retrospective?” That seems to be the question the post tries to answer.

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.