Skipping It

When faced with outside pressures or critical deadlines, some Scrum teams will cancel the sprint retrospective. Cancelling a retrospective because a team needs the time to work is a symptom of dysfunction. In these situations, a retrospective is exactly what a team needs.

When working in a complex domain where outcomes are more unknown than known, a Scrum team needs to take time to think about how members are working together, and adapt their approach as needed. Outside pressure is a sign that there might be organizational dysfunction that the team isn’t dealing with appropriately. It’s important to inspect where outside pressures are coming from, and create a plan for resolving those issues. A lack of transparency to the world outside the Scrum team is often the culprit.

How can you convince your team to hold the retrospective, even when they feel there’s no time for it? Here are some questions you can ask the team when they’re trying to skip the retrospective:

• Where are the pressures we’re feeling coming from?

• The time we get back by canceling—is that going to be the difference between success and failure?

• How did the deadline we’re facing come to be?

• Is our architecture stable and appropriate for the product?

• Is technical debt readily apparent in what we’re building?

A retrospective should never be canceled because there isn’t enough time for it. It’s the Scrum team’s opportunity to inspect why they don’t have time and adapt so they don’t feel that way again. Canceling the retrospective is putting a bandage on a wound that’s only going to get worse over time. Per The Scrum Guide, the time box for a retrospective is three hours for a four-week sprint, so what time are you really getting back? If three hours can make or break your four-week sprint, you need to reveal the deeper issues.