This post takes into review Agile Retrospectives Making Good Teams Great book by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen, foreword by Ken Schwaber [1]. The book teaches how to organize and lead retrospectives from A to Z from the conceptual point of view.
Introduction
The full title reveals the purpose of the content. This book is in particular focused on agile retrospectives. The continuous inspection and adaptation is the foundation for all investigations. Authors pay attention on teams development. There is always a reason to look at last work period and reflect on the results. This is the base to improve team work and develop individuals as well. In addition to iteration based retrospective we get guideline for release and projects retrospectives.
Audience
This publication is especially useful for retrospective leaders, facilitators, scrum masters, project managers.
Style
This book is written in the retrospective leader’s eyes. The rich experience and general respect of book’s authors convinces to read the book. There are given useful examples in every chapter. The content is very clear and is expressed in the explicit way.
Content
In the beginning there is introduced the retrospective general structure as predefined parts. The following chapters take into account those parts in details. There are introduced different techniques to organize appropriate parts of a retrospective. We learn both how to lead interesting session and how to handle inconvenient situations occurring during session. It is not enough to read the book in order to master facilitation skills. The book is a solid base to learn and take action in practice.
Summary
I strongly recommend to read this publication when you organize or suppose to organize any kind of retrospective. This book is still valid, even though it was published in 2006. It may support you in organizing efficient and impressive retro sessions.