Agile Retrospectives, by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen, is yet another imminently useful and readable book from the Pragmatic Programmer's Bookshelf. Previously, Norm Kerth's Project Restrospectives was considered the definitive work in this area. Some may prefer Kerth's style of writing whereas others may find it a bit to "flowery" and will favor the plainer and more concise phrasing and style of Agile Retrospectives. In either case, Derby and Larsen had their "work cut out for them" in trying to succeed Kerth's book and website - fortunately for them they succeeded marvelously!  

Agile Retrospectives was listed number three in Amazon.com's Top Ten Tech Books for 2006 on the subject of "Computers and Internet." So there are already many good reviews of this book of this book on the web and I won't try to outdo them. Interested readers might want to see the review at the On Be(come)ing Agile blog, and also at InfoQ.com (the latter includes a free excerpt).

Kerth's book goes into depth about retrospectives and the reasons for them, and also spends a lot of time (and text) on the longer type of project retrospectives that may take a day or more. In contrast, Agile Retrospectives, focuses mostly on the shorter kind of retrospective that takes less than a day, and often no more than an hour or two. In this book, it's not just the style of retrospective that is shorter {sidebar id=1} and more to the point, the style of writing is also shorter and more to the point. It gives very brief but clear explanations and then quickly moves on to stories, strategies, or "How To"-style tips & techniques.

The focus of the book is on short and simple activities to prepare for, conduct, and then analyze the results of your retrospective. The early chapters of the book introduce the need to "inspect and adapt" and how to lead and customize retrospectives to fit your team environment. The rest of the chapters focus on activities for various kinds or stages of retrospective. There are chapters on activities to: Set the Stage, Gather Data, Generate Insights, Close the Retrospective, and even an appendix on Debriefing. Subsequent chapters deal with end-of-iteration and end-of-release/project retrospectives, and how to "Make it So." There are also appendices for Facilitation Supplies, an Activities Quick-Reference Matrix, and Resources for Learning Facilitation Skills.

For this reason, I found Agile Retrospectives better suited for those who want to quickly "get up and running" with retrospectives for their own projects and teams. It spends less time talking about the retrospective prime directive and avoiding blame and devotes more time to the practical activities of how to actually do that, and how to improve team synergy and collaboration (and project success).

I myself am just about to conduct a retrospective for one of my own project teams, and rereading the book for this review very quickly gave me several additional tips and insights that I want to remember and use for myself. Agile Retrospectives is the perfect book for those who want to quickly understand the pragmatic reasons and applications of conducting retrospectives, and take away key insights, strategies, and tactics that they can immediately use in their own projects and teams!

About the Reviewer
Brad Appleton is an enterprise SCM/ALM solution architect for a Fortune 100 technology company. Currently he helps projects and teams adopt and apply agile development & SCM practices. Brad also author's the Agile CM Environments blog, and is co-author of Software Configuration Management Patterns: Effective Teamwork, Practical Integration, the "Agile SCM" column in CMCrossroads.com's CM Journal, and is a former section editor for The C++ Report. Since 1987, Brad has extensive experience using, developing, and supporting SCM environments for teams of all shapes and sizes. He holds an M.S. in Software Engineering and a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics.   

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