#9 Retro Missing Key Improvements

Symptom: The retrospective only takes into account the last few days of the iteration and the derived improvements tend to be quite generic.

Probable Cause: The team are not remembering what happened during the iteration and bringing this into the retrospective.

Suggested Resolution: Try to draw a time line of events at the start of the retrospective and get the team to add what significant events affected them either in a positive way or what events had a negative impact.

Taking a little time at the start of the retrospective to draw a white board representation of what happened over the past iteration will help the team to remember the context for what went well and what improvements can be made, and should lead to a richer retrospective.

What you are looking for here is to improve the quality of items raised at the retrospective so that you can get some high value improvements and real traction for the team.

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