Realizing the potential of retrospectives with team reflexivity : an intervention study to improve reflection and planning in evaluation meetings of Scrum teams

In the complex work environment of software development (SD) teams, the quality of teamwork is vital for their effectivity. The Scrum method copes with this by engaging collaborative teamwork methods and developing software in short iterations. In Scrum, the development process is regularly evaluated during a 'retrospective' meeting during which action points (AP's) are set. However, although Scrum teams often report problems, they cannot effectively respond to these issues. The goal of this study is to support Scrum teams from a Dutch SD firm with an intervention. The research question was: How can we design an intervention that supports Scrum teams to enhance team reflexivity during their retrospectives? A quasi-experimental control group design was designed, three SD Scrum teams participated and fifteen video observations of retrospectives were made. The intervention was a one-hour training to teach the teams how to make SMART AP’s. The videos were coded with a coding scheme. This study has found that there is room for improvement in the continuous improvement through retrospectives, as a lot of examples of low quality team reflexivity were identified. Also, the intervention was not enough to solve the team’s issues as there were only small, brief changes.