The most popular questions in agile retrospectives

Many Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters are looking for the best agile retrospective questions - but which ones might those be? Of course, that depends on your own taste and many other things. But if we look at which methods are most commonly used, we might find a pattern that helps us identify the best agile retrospective questions.

Best agile retrospective questions

Some thoughts on the “best” retrospective questions

To be honest, the best agile retrospective questions are always the ones that fit the team’s needs perfectly at the time. That’s why I generally recommend trying out lots of retros to get a good feel for them:  54 fun retrospective methods for every occasion

It could be summer, for example, and it’s brutally hot. Under these circumstances, not everyone is in the mood for a retrospective. You could play with it a little and do the summer retrospective. The same goes for Christmas or Easter, for example.

Looking at the rational above, in my experience as Scrum Master and Psychologist I would say there are two retrospective ideas that are the most common ones, thus, you might call them the best agile retrospective questions.

Some great retrospective questions

First of all, there is a core question that I think is definitely one of the best questions for agile retros. Every retrospective should include it in one way or another:

• What were the reasons why we were unable to complete all the planned user stories?

So if you only want to ask one question, I would recommend you ask this one - assuming, of course, you are working in Scrum sprints/iterations.
If you don’t do this, you can also keep it more abstract: Why have we not yet achieved the goal we set ourselves for today?

In addition, the most typical or most frequent questions asked in a retrospective are basically three questions:

The “What Went Well” retrospective is probably the simplest and most popular or well-known retrospective. It is based on the pattern that we find in many other retrospectives, but in its simplest form:

Another very common retrospective is the so-called “Keep Stop Start Retrospective”. It consists of three questions, which you may have already guessed:

Best agile retrospective questions

The right start to the retrospective

To give your retro that certain something, playful check-ins are worthwhile. Your goal should be that everyone has made an engaged contribution. Because the rule of thumb is: Whoever says nothing in the check-in also says nothing in the rest of the retro… Here is a check-in example:

If you like this check-in game, you will find many more here: The 15 best online retrospective games - feel free to check them out 🙂.

 

Conclusion - The best retrospective questions

If you’re interested in other popular, more offbeat retrospective methods, such as the sailboat retrospective or the Mario Kart retrospective, you can find them here: List of creative retrospective ideas for beginners and professionals . I’m sure you’ll find what you’re looking for there 🙂 .

As you may have seen, you can even open these retrospectives in our retrospective tool: Echometer. It helps you to organize the retrospective in a fun and productive way.