Reflection

Unit IV
 Reflection and Retrospective
• Reflection talks about the individual’s thinking
about what he / she has accomplished
• Retrospective is conducted in project groups
wherein the processes followed are discussed
 Reflection on Learning in Agile Software
Development
• One hour reflective session is carried out at the
end of 2 week iteration
• Software teammates, customer and
management were asked to reflect on
– Software development process
– Teammates
– Roles in the team
– Work habits
– Any additional topics that they wanted to discuss
 Reflections on Learning
About What did you How did you learn it?
learn? What in the development
environment enabled that
learning.
Software development process
The Project
The Teammates
Roles in the team
Work habits
Additional topics – please elaborate

To establish a learning community, each practitioner shared with the other participant
what he or she had learned during personal reflection
 Reflective Practitioner Perspective

• Reflection improves both proficiency and

performance of individuals
• Also a reflective mode of thinking may
improve the performance of some of the agile
practices.
• A possible way to become a reflective
practitioner is by introducing it into the team
 Retrospective
• This is a reflective session that takes place at team level
• Each retrospective session should be facilitated by a moderator (usually is rotated among
the team members)
• The role of Retrospective facilitator includes the selection of a subject for retrospective
after discussing with the team members.

Guidelines for a Retrospective Session

• Only one specific problem should be discussed at each retrospective meeting

• The problem discussed should be related to process and not the developed product
• Subject is choosen by moderator after discussion with team members
• Retrospective cannot exceed one hour
• Whole team should participate
• Team members are encouraged to speak in the meeting
• Moderator records the insights and proposes action items during the meeting
• Decided action items are made immediately effective
 Application of Agile Practices in
Retrospective Sessions
• Whole Team – Entire team should participate in
retrospective session
• Abstraction – Topics represent different levels of abstraction
• Diversity – Everyone should be encouraged to share his / her
thoughts
• Measures - The application of each decision made during
retrospective should be accompanied with a measure to
check the same
• Time allocation – Time should be allocated specifically for
retrospective sessions.
 End of Release Retrospective
• Retrospective Place – usually outside the development site. This helps them to
disconnect them from work and enhance reflective thinking
• Retrospective length – For end of release retrospective a slightly longer duration of
2 days is allocated.
• Retrospective Participants – This depends on the retrospective’s goals. If the goal is
to only discuss the development process, then the corresponding stakeholders
should participate.
• Topic Selection – The topic to be discussed is selected from a list that is generated
by team members.
• Retrospective Preparation- Team members can come up with one positive
experience and one negative experience they have faced during development.
• Retrospective organization – This includes a group activity, a discussion and a
summary
• Retrospective Trigger – A trigger is a stimulus that fosters thinking on selected
topics. Eg: Movies can be used to trigger or stimulate interesting discussions.
 Summary
• This chapter deals with the contribution of
reflective processes – reflection and
retrospective to software development.
• Retrospective is considered as important as
development tasks
• That is with specific time allocations, the
inspiration of agile approach and application
of agile practices