Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives - A Toolbox of Retrospective Exercises

by Luis Gonçalves, Ben Linders

This pocket book contains many exercises that you can use to do retrospectives, supported with the “what” and “why” of retrospectives, the business value and benefits that they can bring you, and advice for introducing and improving retrospectives.

The book is published on InfoQ and Leanpub and in paperback on Amazon and Lulu.

Agile retrospectives are a great way to continuously improve your way of working. Getting actions out of a retrospective that are doable, and getting them done helps teams to learn and improve. We hope that this book helps you and your teams to do retrospectives effectively and efficiently to reflect upon your ways of working, and continuously improve them!

Genres: Nonfiction, Business, Technology, Management

76 pages, ebook

First published December 19, 2013

About the author

Luis Gonçalves is an Entrepreneur, Best Seller Author and International Keynote Speaker.

When consulting he works exclusively with Entrepreneurs, Founders and the Senior Executives of 7 to 8 figure businesses on the implementation of his game changing ‘Organisational Mastery’ Methodology.

By following the ‘Organisational Mastery’ blueprint businesses can scale with speed and simplicity without increasing organisational complexity.

He has been successfully involved in the software industry since 2003 and his blog https://luis-goncalves.com is considered a ‘must-read’ for everyone in the software development industry.

Reviews

[Alexandre Marreiros · Rating 5 out of 5]

When i first start this book i had to confess i had not a big expectation, there are so mutch things around agile. Is very difficult to get a good and helpfull book.

But this...Is very well written and approach a lot off real things we found on real world, For newbies to agile or old folks this is a must see definitly.

I also found taht this book can be very handy to agile workshops by the real world exercises he brings.

A great non theorical book. I had recommend this to mall my team leader's

Alexandre Marreiros

CTO, Trainner, SW architect

[Srinath · Rating 5 out of 5]

Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives is a handy book for Scrum masters, agile coaches, Product Owners on retrospective exercises / games. All the games are explained in simple terms and easy to follow even for newbie SMs / teams and a good reference book for experienced SMs / Agile coaches. A good addition to your Agile bookshelf.

[Marcin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Explains a few different retrospective exercises, both the how and the why. I'm eager to try some of them with my team.

However, the book is filled with links to external webpages which I couldn't access on my offline Kindle; I felt like I was missing out on a lot of context and content. The ebook could use a re-editing to make it more like a book and less like a blog.

[Sven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent compilation of techniques that can be used to run effective retrospectives. Mostly they originate from others but its very handy to have them collected in one place. Also having them in a templated format, when to use, what you can expect, how to use is very useful.

[Fabian Schiller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is great! Every ScrumMaster and Agile Coach should have it on his bookshelf. You can get many practicable ideas for conducting retrospectives from this book. And it is really easily accessible.

[Steve Fenton · Rating 4 out of 5]

You can never have too many ideas when it comes to retrospectives and here are a collection of thoughts that will add to your previous reading on the subject.

I am wary of gamifying the retrospective too much, but there are several methods here I'm sure to use.

[Ingus Rūķis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of ideas compiled from other sources. Due to the fact that I've read those other sources first, not a lot new things found in this book. If this is the first book you read about agile retrospectives, you might like it more.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good and compact pocket book about retrospectives.
Enjoyed reading it.
Not a lot new information, but excellent refresh of known things.

[Luigi Berrettini · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really good concise way to get an overview of retrospectives!

[Ioana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent little handbook on different retrospective techniques and when it is best to use each of them, for example addressing common team vision, understanding Scrum principles or making the most out of the team members' strengths.

[Ben Linders]

Obteniendo valor de las Retrospectivas ágiles is the Spanish translation of the book Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives, written by Luis Gonçalves and Ben Linders. It contains many exercises that you can use to facilitate retrospectives, supported with the “what” and “why” of retrospectives, the business value and benefits that they can bring you, and advice for introducing and improving retrospectives. The book is published on Leanpub

For more information, see the author's translation books page.

With plenty of exercises for your retrospective toolbox, this book will help you to become more proficient in doing retrospectives, and to get more value out of them.

As I am one of the authors of the book, I will refrain from rating it. I'm looking forward to your feedback :-).

Happy reading!

[zoagli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charming little book that you can easily finish in a few hours -- or less, if you know a little about agile retrospectives already. I recommend in addition to the classic Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby et al., because the latter hasn't been updated since 2006.

Takeaways for me were:
- Introduction: inspect & adapt is one of the 12 agile priciples; we're here to learn, not to blame ("Prime Directive")
- Opener: "One-Word Retrospective" exercise
- Timeline of iteration: key events and corresponding mood changes ("Happyness Index" exercise)
- Details: "Starfish" exercise -- Stop, Less, Keep, More, Start (in that order)
- Takeaways: If you could change one thing in the following, what would it be? Settle on 1-3 items.
- Next steps: Make sure the takeawys are kept transparent during the following iteration and review the status in the following retrospective -- I would use Claudio Perrone's "POPCORN Flow" for this.

[Prashant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Retrospective is one of the most important aspects of agile. It’s a main dimension of agile project management.

Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives: A Toolbox of Retrospective Exercises by Luis Gonçalves and Ben Linders is a very handy book for novice and experts. The retrospective ceremony is simple but tough to adapt. Once adapted it is easy to become monotonous and teams can lose their interest. Ultimately we may not get value out of it.

Luis & Ben have done a great job by providing a holistic picture and many exercises which can help for novices as a launch pad for retrospectives. Experts can get new perspectives for doing retrospectives from reading the book.

Sweet & short book to keep handy as a reference whenever required. Thanks to Luis & Ben

[Daan Wagner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good and compact pocket book about retrospectives.
Enjoyed reading it. It is a very handy book for novice and experts. Just keep it simple.

The retrospective ceremony is simple but tough to adapt. Once adapted it is easy to become monotonous and teams can lose their interest. Ultimately we may not get value out of it. This book gives you many exercises which can help for novices as a launch pad for retrospectives


Retrospective is one of the most important aspects when do a project. It’s a main dimension of agile project management.

This short book is for me handy as a reference whenever required. Thanks to Luis & Ben for writing this create book and also published it in Dutch.

[Jesse Houwing · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great hands-on book with multiple techniques, tools, aims and all in a very hands-on manner. It's not the end-all book that describes every possible situation that might come up in a retro, nor does it go deeply into the human psyche, it does provide valuable tips and tricks to make a retrospective more interesting and to get people thinking.

[Eddy Huisman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dit is een prima boekje voor coaches en facilitators die gaan starten met retrospectives of voor diegenen die toe zijn aan een nieuwe creatieve aanpak. Het boekje geeft een kort en bondig overzicht over het hoe en het waarom en bevat daarnaast, in meer detail, een aantal oefeningen. Ik weet zeker dat ik vooral van het laatste veel plezier ga hebben!

[Luis Gonçalves]

When I was starting up it was hard to find ideas for retrospectives.... they were all boring ... no results.... etc. So I decided to write this book with the hope that you will not face the same problem. This book will help you to conduct fantastic retrospectives.

[Olli Sorje · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very thin book that didn't have any additional value for me. Most of the exercises are already well known and they didn't give me any aha-moments. It's not bad but if you have read other books about retrospectives this doesn't offer you that much value.

[Jaroslav Urban · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very nice summary of most of technics for retrospectives. Reading was smooth with nice explanation. I can really recommend this.

[Arseny Burekhin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A useful brief about agile retrospectives

[Jiří · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is easy, quick and to the point. Does nit go into much details but has olenty of valuable hints and many references.

[Evergreenpm · Rating 5 out of 5]

A concise but enough reference about retrospectives.

[Gerard Chiva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Practical and easy read book about Agile restrospectives, with good examples and advice about when to use certain techniques.

[Pierre Neis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting book to understand and perform Retrospectives for Agile Teams.
Highly recommended for Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches.

[Murali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book

[Miguel Guillén · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excelente libro

Es un libro muy práctico y la única forma de hacer que funcione es poniéndolo en práctica. Empieza de a pocos y hazlo fácil. Recurre al libro nuevamente para reforzar los consejos.

[Davor Basic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Luis wrote the standard work on agile retrospectives. You don't have to be an agile team to benefit from this book. You just have to want to improve. Follow his advice and your teams will be more successful.

[Tonći Jajić · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informative but nothing too groundbreaking.

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick read for anyone looking for a summary of Retrospectives and/or some basic retrospective ideas. Not as in depth as Agile Retrospectives:..., but a handy reference book to keep around.

[Ben Linders]

Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives is the first book that Luis Gonçalves and Ben Linders wrote. It contains many exercises that you can use to facilitate retrospectives, supported with the “what” and “why” of retrospectives, the business value and benefits that they can bring you, and advice for introducing and improving retrospectives. The book is published on InfoQ and Leanpub

For more information, see the author's book page.

With plenty of exercises for your retrospective toolbox, this book will help you to become more proficient in doing retrospectives, and to get more value out of them.

As I am one of the authors of the book, I will refrain from rating it. I'm looking forward to your feedback :-).

Happy reading!