In agile software development, where great emphasis is put on effective informal communication, success depends heavily on human and social factors. However, Scrum does not specify any techniques that aid the human side of software development. In this paper we investigate the use of 6 collaborative games for the Sprint Retrospective. Each game was implemented twice in a Scrum team in Intel Technology Poland. The received feedback...

The Sprint Retrospective is a vehicle for continuous process improvement. Even though it is a well established agile practice, running effective retrospective meetings is challenging. There have been a lot of identified problems that commonly occur during these meetings. To address them, Przybyłek & Kotecka [20] successfully revitalized retrospective meetings by adopting collaborative games, which represent a powerful tool in improving...

In today’s fast-paced world of rapid technological change, software development teams need to constantly revise their work practices. Not surprisingly, regular reflection on how to become more effective is perceived as one of the most important principles of Agile Software Development. Nevertheless, running an effective and enjoyable retrospective meeting is still a challenge in real environments. As reported by several studies,...

According to the textbook [23], Scrum exists only in its entirety, where every component is essential to Scrum’s success. However, in many organizational environments some of the components are omitted or modified in a way that is not aligned with the Scrum guidelines. Usually, such deviations result in missing the full benefits of Scrum [24]. Thereby, a Scrum process should be frequently inspected and any deviations should be...