Agile

Custom Retrospectives: One size does not fit all.

Luis Ortiz

— 2 min read

One of the main goals of Agile methodologies is continuous improvement. The most important event for this is Agile Retrospectives.

A very important part of Agile Methodologies is keeping your users close and getting feedback regularly. So when we launched our Agile Retrospectives for Confluence tool (UPDATE: We now have a Jira version), we decided to continuously look for feedback from our users and from our friends.
(It has even been featured on Atlassian's blog as one of 4 Confluence add-ons that increase team performance.)

CatapultLabs is all about helping remote teams adopt Agile methodologies in an easier and more effective way. And that means having a really engaging and productive session, EVERY time. And what's engaging for some, may not be interesting for others. So we realized we needed more flexibility in our tools.

Our tools are used by multidisciplinary teams distributed around the globe. Although we used to have the standard model of Agile Retrospective (What went well, What didn't go well), the general comment was for users to have the option to use any type of retrospective technique they'd like. And there's a lot! Just take a look at some great sources like Fun Retrospectives, The Retrospectives Wiki or Ben Linders. You'll find a bunch of options to execute with your team to get great results, so there's no need to be stuck using one single methodology. Make it interesting and change from the 4 L's, to KALM, to speedcar to.... You get the idea.

With our new customizable columns configuration (up to 4 columns), you can use any technique you like. Just easily configure it at the beginning of the session.

You can even come up with a different set of names for the columns and run a brand new type of retrospective. Experiment, see what works for your team.

Another improvement is allowing for the moderator role to change owner and also to edit the number of votes each person/issue can give/receive. These are great improvements for managing how long do these sessions take.

Hosting, recording and following up on your custom Agile Retrospectives inside Confluence has never been easier. Our tools Agile Retrospectives for Confluence or for Jira makes it easy for you to set up your session, publish it, and invite your team!

We're all about improving communication and so far we have tackled the basic events for Agile adoption.

We have a tool to run Agile Retrospectives in Confluence and one for Agile Retrospectives in Jira, two for estimations using the Planning Poker methodology: Scrum Poker for Confluence and Scrum Poker for Jira for estimations regardless of platform; and our most recent tool is Stand.Bot, which automates daily updates in remote teams.

We are always looking for ways to improve our products, so do not hesitate about giving us your feedback.

Trying to improve your #Agile practices? OR are you getting started with Agile? Are you in a remote team? Check out our products for Agile teams at CatapultLabs. We focus on making agile ceremonies more effective and easier to adopt for remote teams.

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