What is the Sprint Retrospective?

Question

Accepted Answer

The Sprint Retrospective is the **team's regular opportunity to inspect how it worked and plan improvements**. It happens after the Review and before the next Sprint Planning. The focus is the *process* — people, relationships, tools, and Definition of Done — not the product itself.

## How it works

A simple, popular structure:

```text
1. What went well?      (keep doing)
2. What didn't?         (problems and friction)
3. What will we change? (1-2 concrete, owned actions)
```

The key output is a **small number of actionable improvements**, ideally added to the next Sprint Backlog so they actually happen.

## Concrete example

The team notices code reviews stalled for days. They agree to a rule: review requests are picked up within four hours. One person owns posting a reminder. Next Retrospective, they check whether it worked.

## Common pitfalls

- Generating 15 action items and doing none — pick one or two.
- Blame instead of curiosity, which kills psychological safety.
- Skipping it under deadline pressure, which removes the improvement engine.

## Why it matters

Continuous improvement is what separates a team that gets better every Sprint from one that repeats the same mistakes.

A safe, focused Retrospective turns frustrations into concrete changes, which is the whole point of being empirical.