Multi-Team Retrospective

Play Description

[BETA VERSION – UNDER FINAL REVIEW]

Pattern Summary

Multi-Team Retrospective is a gathering of a network of agile teams [link to network of teams] to support continuous improvement efforts across the teams. It enables teams identify dependencies, exchange insights, and align work efforts, and collaborate, all while fostering an open feedback environment.

Related Patterns

Scrum Of Scrums, Inspect and Adapt, Scrumming the Scrum, Sprint Retrospective, Stable Teams

Symptom Categories 

Lack of Cross-Team Learning, Siloed Improvements, Bottlenecks in Dependencies, Inefficiencies in Scaling

Symptoms Addressed

Multi-Team Retrospectives address key challenges, including:

1. Lack of visibility into common bottlenecks
2. Uncertainty or inconsistency in how teams collaborate
3. Missed opportunities for improvement across multiple teams
4. Ensuring that continuous improvement extends beyond a single team’s scope
5. Address and escalate issues beyond the scope of a single team’s control for resolution.

Detailed Description

A Multi-Team Retrospective is an approach to continuous improvement across multiple agile teams. It enables teams identify dependencies, exchange insights, and align on collaboration across teams, all while fostering an open feedback environment. It brings together multiple teams to reflect on their collective experiences, identify cross-team challenges, and co-create solutions that enhance overall agility. Unlike single-team retrospectives that focus on team-level improvements, this approach broadens the perspective by including insights from multiple teams working towards a shared goal. The format can vary depending on the scaling framework.

One effective approach within this context is leveraging World Café Style Discussions. These facilitation techniques, commonly used in frameworks like Scrum@Scale, SAFe, and LeSS, foster cross-team collaboration during large-scale retrospectives. By engaging multiple teams in structured conversations, they enable participants to explore challenges, share opportunities, and drive system-wide learning, making them a valuable tool for scaling agile practices.

Teams can use structured facilitation methods to ensure effective discussions, such as:

• Surveys & individual interviews
• Shared retro boards
• Polling & voting techniques
• Post-mortems & root cause analysis
• Cross-team dependency mapping
• Silent mind-mapping

By leveraging diverse perspectives, Multi-Team Retrospectives can unlock broader solutions, reduce inefficiencies, and improve overall team collaboration.

Use When

• Teams have interdependencies that impact delivery
• Teams have process bottlenecks outside of the team’s control
• There is a need to align on shared challenges and opportunities
• Continuous improvement should span multiple teams
• Cross-team learning can accelerate problem-solving
• Teams are struggling with conflicting collaboration styles

Do Not Use When

• Teams operate independently with minimal dependencies
• There is strong resistance to change within teams
• A single-team retrospective is sufficient to resolve challenges

In Frameworks

Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe): SAFe emphasizes Multi-Team Retrospectives through its Inspect and Adapt event, bringing teams together to identify and resolve systemic issues. This structured approach ensures that recurring challenges are addressed at both team and program levels, fostering enterprise-wide improvements.

Scrum@Scale: The Network of Teams, called a Scrum of Scrums in Scrum@Scale, facilitates cross-team learning, and retrospectives at this level focus on inter-team challenges. By integrating feedback loops across multiple Scrum teams, it helps organizations scale Agile while maintaining alignment and continuous progress.

Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS): Encourages joint retrospectives to maintain a shared learning culture. These retrospectives help teams uncover dependencies, synchronize improvements, and ensure a cohesive approach to scaling Agile practices.

Disciplined Agile (DA): Supports a flexible, context-driven approach to continuous improvement, making Multi-Team Retrospectives an adaptable technique within DA’s toolkit. It enables teams to tailor retrospective formats to their specific needs, promoting collaboration and data-driven decision-making.

How to Use

1. Define the Scope: Identify which teams should participate based on interdependencies and shared objectives.
2. Select Facilitation Methods: Choose structured techniques that ensure constructive discussions.
3. Encourage Open Feedback: Foster a safe environment for honest discussions without fear of blame.
4. Identify Cross-Team Themes: Look for common pain points across teams.
5. Prioritize and Act: Convert discussion points into actionable improvements.
6. Follow-Up: Track the implementation of improvements in subsequent retrospectives.

Alternatively, use the Double Diamond method to pinpoint the most significant process issues or bottlenecks within the network of teams, and then either implement a resolution or determine the next steps toward addressing them.