How to run Agile Retrospectives inside JIRA

How to run Agile Retrospectives sessions inside your JIRA platform using our Agile Retrospectives for Jira app. 

Step-by-step guide for hosting Agile Retrospectives sessions after you have installed the Agile Retrospectives for Jira app.

After properly installing the app, go to any of your software project in JIRA. You should see our app available for you on the side bar. Like this:

Open

• You can create a Retrospective session anytime you want. Create one with anticipation and share it with your team so your team is ready beforehand and you'll save even more time & money.  Click on the Retrospectives button. You are going to be taken to your Retrospectives space where you'll have the history of previous Retrospectives sessions. If this is your first one, you should see this message:

Open

If you have already done Agile Retrospectives, you'll see a history of them. Like this:

• You can either open a saved session or create a new one. For this example, we'll create a new session. Click on the "New Retrospective" button.

• On this screen, you can customize your session:

  • Choose the name.

  • Choose the number of columns needed and the title of each one. This will let you run different Retrospectives techniques, i.e. "4L's", "Start,Stop,Continue",  "Thinking Hats", "SailBoats", "Glad, Sad, Mad", etc. 

  • Choose to run an open retrospective or an anonymous Retrospectives. This feature was a request from our users in the Confluence app. This will open your team to input any idea. Just like using folded post-its on a hat. 

  • Choose the number of votes each player will have and how many votes per topic can they give. 

You can also choose to save the session for later, or start it right away. 

• If you didn't choose to start the session, you'll see the saved session on the Agile Retrospectives page:
  
  

  
  
  

• Click on Join the session and then "Share Session Link". Wait for your team to join the session and the moderator starts the session by clicking "Get Started":
  
  

  
  
  

• NOTE: At any time during the session you can transfer the moderator role to any other team member by clicking the crown icon next to each user, you'll get a confirmation text box. Click Save to transfer the role, or close to cancel.
  
  

• Once you've started the session is time for your team to input their ideas on each column. This is done simultaneously by the entire team. You'll notice that the inputs are blurred at first, this is done to avoid what's called "Groupthink". You can still see who has made these inputs, but on the anonymous version, you won't see it. 
  
  

  
  
  

• After each team member is done with their inputs, they should click "I'm done" on the upper right corner. Everyone Can see who's ready by clicking the "Who's Ready" button on the upper left corner. Like this:
  
  
  

• After everyone on the team inputs their ideas, it is natural to have several ideas on the same topic (You're all on the same team). To avoid having an extremely long list of inputs, the next step is to group similar ideas per topic. Simply Drag & Drop any item to the grouping area and input a name for the topic. Then drag any other input that's related to the same topic. Once you've grouped all of the inputs for that topic, click on the "check" sign on the upper right corner. 
  
  

• You'll see the inputs grouped by topic. Just click on each topic to expand and see all of them. 
  
  

• After the inputs are grouped, it's time for the team to vote for the most important issues. Each team member will get the number of votes and votes per topic that you defined when setting up the Retrospective session.Again, each player should press the "I'm Ready" button when they are done voting:
  
  

• After voting, the team discusses all of the topics, they have information on how many votes did each topic get. Now is the team to make agreements about the action items needed to address each topic.
  
  

• Also, as a team you will assign an owner for each action item.

  • NOTE: The owner of the action item is not necesarily who will perform the work needed. It's about who is in charge of making sure the task gets done. 
    
    

• Once the Retrospective is done, you'll always have access to the summary of the sesion. The team is able to come back to the session, see who is the owner for each action item, and check each action item that has been addressed already.

  • NOTE: Agile Retrospectives for Jira app gives us increased visibility & transparency in the process. This results in a greater engagement and accountability from the team in working towards the agreements made as a team. 
    
    

• You'll always have a history of the completed sessions and the pending ones on the Retrospectives page. 

Check out our blog to find best practices and cool tips & tricks to improve your results with Agile Retrospectives!

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