The Blob Retro

What is a Retrospective

A retro is an event which takes place at the end of a piece of work in an agile workplace where the people involved reflect the way they worked. It is also important to take actions moving forward to enhance the good and reject the bad.

Preface

My first experience of a retro was on a trial day for my second software engineering job. In my previous job we rarely spoke to one another, we were allowed to mention when wasteful tasks blocked our success. There were whispers of upcoming code-reviews, the use of version control and many more which, in my four-month internship, never saw the light of day.

Jump to my first day at a new job, I saw what is classically known as the “mad sad glad retro”, this team was lovingly joking about somebody returning from holiday, eventually deciding to put it into the “glad” column so that they wouldn’t be angry when he walked into the room. For the first time, I was witnessing a team that not only enjoyed working together but had the confidence in their team to proudly look inward and improve who they were and further, make an effort to improve the way the worked with one another.

If they did this at my last company they might’ve become an enjoyable place to work.

But it doesn’t end with just one type of retro, there are hundreds of different types and variations of the classic retrospective. Like many other agile techniques, retros often have hidden benevolent intentions.