The most important meeting - Retrospective

In my opinion Retrospective meeting is the most important meeting to have with any team. And it is the meeting some teams think they can skip. I have been asked "can we skip Retrospective this time as we are busy with ...?" or "Do we have to have these retrospective meetings, can't we just concentrate on working?"

I do understand teams when there is no value added in these meetings. And I feel it is my responsibility as Scrum Master to make them value adding meetings where people want to join and give their input how team should and could improve. I don't want sit in the meeting which doesn't offer anything to me or to my team.

I don't understand though when team is telling me that they have nothing to improve anymore so they can skip these meetings. I wasn't Scrum Master at that time - I was Agile Coach for several teams and their Scrum Masters and Product Owners when this happened. One Product Owner in all his honesty told me that the team is doing so great that they simply don't have anything to improve. They can from now on skip these meetings and by the way, they can skip some other meetings as well. Why to spend time for planning together when Product Owner can plan behalf of the team together with Business Analyst. Team can concentrate on the real work.

Immediate thought in my head was "I would like to facilitate your Retrospective meeting!" In my opinion almost all challenges team faces can be worked in Retrospective meetings. Impediments are something to solve throughout Sprints but other kind of challenges  I'd leave for Retrospective. I struggled a lot in that situation: should I let the team to have their way or should I act. In the end I discussed with Product Owner and let the team to decide. Unfortunately I left the company quite soon after that event so I don't know what happened.

I like to keep my teams on their toes and I vary a lot how we do our Retrospectives. Personally I hate when things are repeated the same way again and again. Before each Retrospective I look back and think do I have something special in my mind - kind of theme to handle - or do I want team to give topics to discuss. Then I decide how I facilitate the Retrospective: which tools or techniques to use - that is always my first decision to make before any Retrospective meeting. Sometimes I change my mind just before meetings starts and improvise.

I search inspiration from books and internet. Lately I have created my own techniques and I have experimented lot of different techniques. My challenge is to work with distributed team and I facilitate online Retrospectives. I hope there would be more material on how to facilitate online Retrospective or any other online meetings. Extra challenge in my current environment is that I am not  able to utilise what ever applications or online services. I have to figure out my own ways. I have to adjust and use what I have and improvise. That keeps me on my toes as well.

Quite many Scrum Masters in my unit are facilitating their Retrospective meetings in the same way every time. I have been told that teams don't like to vary or they themselves believe that it is the most efficient way not to vary. Some have told that they have planned to change but then they end up to have it in the same way as they didn't figure out what else to do. Sometimes I can't help myself thinking how could I help my colleagues to go beyond their comfort zone and try something new, something different - do an experiment and learn from it. Some of my colleagues are so busy "with the real work" that they don't find time to look for inspiration and plan something different.

Note to myself: I need help my colleagues!