Retrospectives Antipatterns

By: Aino Vonge Corry

Narrated by: Aino Vonge Corry

Improve every retrospective! Real solutions for every team leader, facilitator, and participant.

“...Aino has shared a robust, curated list of antipatterns and how to avoid them.... And she has shared so much more than tips and techniques. You will find a gold mine—with precious nuggets, including her personal experiences, effective facilitation resources, and pointers for extracting yourself and your team when you’re stuck.” (From the foreword by Diana Larsen, coauthor, Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great)

Retrospectives are indispensable for continuous learning and improvement in lean, Agile, DevOps, and other contexts, but most of us have suffered through at least one retrospective that was a waste of time or worse. Now, leading Agile coach Aino Vonge Corry identifies 24 reasons that retrospectives fail and shows how to overcome each of them.

Using the familiar “patterns” approach, Retrospectives Antipatterns introduces antipatterns related to structure, planning, people, distributed teams, and more. Corry shares traps she’s encountered and mistakes she’s made over more than a decade of leading retrospectives and then presents proven solutions. With her insights and guidance, you can run enjoyable retrospectives that deliver concrete improvements and real value, or at the very least, recognize when you are making the same mistake as the author!

• Create a common language, actionable solutions, and proven plans for solving the retrospective problems you’ll encounter most often
• Recognize symptoms, assess trade-offs, and refactor your current situation into something better
• Plan more effectively: Decide who should attend and facilitate, when to schedule your retrospective, and how much time to set aside
• Handle “people” problems: Deal with negativity, silence, distrust, disillusionment, loudmouths, and cultural differences
• Facilitate better “virtual” retrospectives, with tips for online retrospectives included in each antipattern

©2022 Aino Vonge Corry (P)2022 Aino Vonge Corry

Critic reviews

“[A]ino has shared a robust, curated list of antipatterns and how to avoid them.... And she has shared so much more than tips and techniques. You will find a gold mine—with precious nuggets, including her personal experiences, effective facilitation resources, and pointers for extracting yourself and your team when you’re stuck.” (From the foreword by Diana Larsen, coauthor, Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great)

a must read on retrospectives

i swallowed the book in a few days. full of open and funny anecdotes on what not to do - and i did them all… for each pattern there is also i refactored solution and along the way some good tips on reading ahead.
eventhough the focus is on retrospectives i find it helpful for general facilitating.
thank you for a good, well-written and narrated book which im really happy to have read

Mandatory reading for ambitious Scrum Masters!

Aino is one of the best Retrospectives facilitators, period! In this book she shares her experiences, both the successful ones and the ones she learned the most from. Structured as anti-patterns with their corresponding patterns (yet another area of expertise of Aino's), the book teaches the reader how to spot dysfunctions and how the remedy them. My personal opinion is that many of the book's advice are applicable in other setting than just Retrospectives - these are advice for becoming a successful employee or consultant as well.