Week 6: Scrum Retrospective - Sprint 3

Today, we had our second retrospective, and that was of Sprint 3. A few words before talking about the retrospective itself: The room was very busy with three teams and it was so noisy that we could barely understand each other's words. It was a real challenge to do a proper retrospective today and perhaps that is one of the reasons why we did not manage to finish this retrospective.

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What Went Well

A few things had improved since the last sprint, which was great to see, including the following:

• Unlike in the previous sprint, Sprint 2, we managed to finish a larger percentage of our tasks. Some of them might still get finished by Sunday.

• We are working in a better way with Scrum, it has helped us plan.

• We have a lot of the things that we need for building the installation, including the hardware, the MDF wood and the nails, wood glue and paint

• The attitude of most team members is good and positive: We are not going to fail but we will make it!

• We went to the Escape Room, which really helped us get to know each other better and build our team spirit.

• The team work is good. As a team, we also grew and moved closer together, since we got to know each other more over the past two weeks.

• There is a willingness to help each other and tolerance for each other's problems (e.g. web development, thesis). This is because we have also become more open about these things to each other.

• Thanks to the better communication and the improved work with the Scrum Board in this sprint, we are also better informed about what everyone in the team is doing at a particular time.

• We dealt with setbacks in a fast, flexible way, e.g. when we could not use the wood from Julia's boyfriend's dad or did not get the plywood as soon as we were hoping.

• Everyone did their share of the team blog posts.

• After having talked about this problem in the last retrospective, we have managed to focus more on our tasks and get less easily distracted by other things.

• We have found three sponsors: Hubo, LEDs4Life and de Broodbode.

• We have started programming our website.

• We have started with social media.

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What Could Be Improved

In the last sprint, there were a lot of things to improve, but also in this sprint, we identified plenty of them.

• The Demo 2 presentation did not go well because we were poorly prepared.

• With some of our sponsors, things evolve slowly. For example, we always have to wait for ages to get a response from de Broodbode. Also, Hubo postponed the date for picking up the plywood two times already.

• We are behind with some of the tasks and should definitely catch up: Building, testing, programming, research and the backstory of our installation.

• We don't have a backstory to our concept. Therefore, it is difficult to attract our target group and to justify that we have a layered concept.

• There are some tasks that no one wants to do, which is why they get done really slowly.

• Most of the team members are regularly 5-10 minutes late for meetings.

• When we have a team meeting and everyone is supposed to focus on a task, people work on their own tasks on the side, which is distracting.

• Sometimes, we still get distracted and don't stick to the things we were actually talking about.

• The last scrum planning session took way too long.

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Actions to Be Taken

As explained above, we did not manage to finish the retrospective, but for a few points to improve, we found solutions.

• For the next Demo presentation, we will prepare more. It is important to rehearse the presentation and to define how many minutes each slide should take. Less details should be presented but the key findings should be pointed out more strongly. If we have made iterations within the sprint, the iterations can be named but the focus should be on the status quo. We should present more results of our street survey.

• For the sponsors, we should ask again if we get no response. We should give the sponsors a deadline in advance and explain why it is important to meet a deadline. For the search of new sponsors, we should be better prepared. We should present which kind of sponsoring agreement we have in mind, and present them the details so we can come to an agreement quickly.

• To catch up with the tasks that we're behind with, we should work more hours and make a schedule: On which day, what should be done?

• For the backstory, we already have a few ideas. Until next Monday, everybody should elaborate on 1-2 ideas to make a nice concept out of it.

• If someone does not want to do a task, this person should ask the others for help or for swapping tasks.