6 tips for Scrum Master to make Retrospection meeting effective

Comparing to other Scrum Meetings, Sprint retrospection meeting is sometimes considered boring by the Scrum Teams. Team do not find much value in participating in this meeting. What could be cause of such feelings. Sometimes this becomes repetitive and same issues/pointers are discussed. SM need to think over it.

I advise the Scrum Master to follow the below mentioned pointers to make retrospective meeting effective:

1) This is a place for team to talk about the people, process, relationships and tools which are delicate matters as there are chances team members start pointing fingers to one another for the failure. SM master need to avoid such discussion to popup. Lets keep this meeting healthy. Note it down and discuss it later with the concerned member.

2) See all the team members are getting the opportunity to talk and share their thoughts on the sprint. 

3) This meeting to thank to all the people who helped during sprint execution. There could be dependencies with external team and if that team helped then do not forget to acknowledge them.

4) Share the summary with team ( like how much was committed and how much is delivered and        what is the velocity etc) Let the team know what their current performance is. 

5) Try to know if there was something new that was tried. Did it work or not. Even if it  did not work,      appreciate the efforts.

6) Ensure to go through the last sprints action item and share the progress with team.

Finally the idea is to make small improvement which could be measurable. 

Above mentioned pointers would surely make this meeting effective and enjoyable for next sprint.