A Scrum Team ends every Sprint Retrospective with a list of a dozen improvements written on a wall, and none of them has ever happened. What does Scrum suggest instead?
Professional Scrum Master I, objective 1. Understanding and applying the Scrum framework medium
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The options
Correct Identify the most helpful changes, address the most impactful ones as soon as possible, and if useful put them in the next Sprint's Sprint Backlog
Correct. Putting an improvement into the Sprint Backlog is what turns it from a wish into work the Developers have planned and can inspect at the Daily Scrum.
Not correct Move the improvements into the Product Backlog so that the Product Owner can order them against feature work
Wrong. Ranking the team's own way of working against customer-facing value puts improvements permanently last. The Sprint Backlog is where Scrum points, and it belongs to the Developers.
Not correct Hold the Retrospective every second Sprint so that there is time to act on the last one
Wrong. The Retrospective happens once per Sprint and concludes it. Halving the inspection to compensate for zero adaptation reduces the only signal the team has.
Not correct Assign each improvement to a named Developer and track their completion at the Daily Scrum
Wrong. The Daily Scrum inspects progress toward the Sprint Goal, and handing personal action items to individuals cuts across self-management. An improvement that matters becomes work the team does, not a chore with somebody's name on it.
Why
The Sprint Retrospective plans ways to increase quality and effectiveness, and the word plan is doing real work there — a Retrospective that produces observations is only half the event. Scrum's own suggestion is deliberately concrete: pick the most impactful improvements and address them as soon as possible, even by adding them to the Sprint Backlog for the next Sprint, where they compete for attention with everything else the Developers have planned.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- Scrum Guide section Sprint Retrospective
- What it says
- The most impactful improvements are addressed as soon as possible. They may even be added to the Sprint Backlog for the next Sprint.
Practise this
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Practise Professional Scrum Master I
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