UnSMART Improvements at Retrospectives — Making Your Scrum Work #18

TL; DR: Unsmart Improvements

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 that typically flies under the radar is improvements. While the Scrum Guide encourages addressing the most impactful ones as soon as possible, it is up to the Scrum team to figure out how to improve. One manifestation of this core team task we often encounter is picking unsmart improvements, though.

Join me and delve into the consequences of picking unsmart improvements as a Scrum Team in less than 90 seconds.

Unsmart Improvements — Making Your Scrum Work #18 — Age-of-Product.com

🗳 Update: Join the poll on how to deal with unsmart improvement items.

🗞 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 #34: Core Protocols for Psychological Safety — Richard Kasperowski — Age-of-Product.com

📅 Join us on September 7, 2021: Hands-on Agile #34: Core Protocols for Psychological Safety with Richard Kasperowski.

Sprint Retrospectives According to the Scrum Guide

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

  • Page 6: The Scrum Master is accountable for the Scrum Team’s effectiveness.
  • Page 6: [Scrum Masters] do this by enabling the Scrum Team to improve its practices, within the Scrum framework.
  • 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: 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.

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

The Scrum Guide 2020 no longer advocates the previous approach: Choose at least one high-level improvement item for the next Sprint; now, it is a suggestion. However, the Scrum Guide does not guide how to accomplish the task at hand.

Manifestations of an Unsuited Improvement Approach

In my experience, three typical anti-patterns prevent a Scrum team from improving its way of working despite pouring money, brain, and time into becoming better at their game:

  1. The Scrum team picks unSMART actions: Bill Wake created the SMART acronym for reasonable action items: S – Specific, M – Measurable, A – Achievable, R – Relevant, T – Time-boxed. If the team picks unSMART action items, though, it sets itself up for failure. Example: “We want to change the bonus scheme of the company.” Good luck achieving that goal during the next Sprint!
  2. #NoOwner: No directly responsible individual takes care of an improvement item. (If the “team” is supposed to fix issue X, probably everyone will rely on their teammates to handle it. Find a caretaker instead.)
  3. #NoFollowUp: The Scrum team does not check the status of the action items from the previous Sprint Retrospectives. (The sibling of autonomy is accountability. If you are not following up on what you wanted to improve before, why care about picking action items in the first place? Do not let the momentum of a successful Retrospect fizzle out that way. )

Cannot see the form?
Please click here

Unsmart Improvements — Conclusion

Every Scrum event is an opportunity for inspection and adaptation. The Sprint Retrospective provides that opportunity to the Scrum Team itself. While the Scrum Guide is no longer prescriptive regarding improvements, it points to the importance of continuously improving as a Scrum team. Hence, avoid standing in your way by picking unsmart improvements.

Have you met a Scrum team choosing unsmart improvements? What happened? 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.

📖 Unsmart Improvements — Related Posts

Skipping Retrospectives? — Making Your Scrum Work #17

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!

4 thoughts on “UnSMART Improvements at Retrospectives — Making Your Scrum Work #18”

  1. Hello Stephan,
    we have experienced some UnSMART improvements picked by the team. But the team learned soon to think about it and propose SMART improvements and small enough to fit well in a Sprint.
    Additionally, we also suffered some #NoOwner when the improvement was assigned to the Team.

    What I found particularly difficult is the #FollowUp when the improvement is a change on the way the team works (workflow, sprint dynamics, testing strategy, …). Basically, the improvement is not a work item to do, it is a decision that the team takes. But then, the team easily forgot what has been decided or by inertia the team continues to work the same way.

    Greetings from Barcelona

  2. Hello Stefan,
    Thanks for your regular ideas. I must admit that this one I did not fully understand. The Scrum Guide leads us what to do (the last in your bullet list – take the most important improvements and agree to put it into the Sprint Backlog). One can simply apply this.

    Sprint Backlog is guarantee enough, that an item gives enough attention in terms of accountability, manageability by the team, transparency what exactly to achieve etc. And the rest of ideas and wishes… yes, some are just complaints about the space around us.

    I think all the teams know this principle, at least those who have passed Sprint 3 :-).
    Thanks anyway for your ideas and thoughts – glad to receive them.
    Greetings from Prague

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.