Managers in Retrospectives? 5 Tips & Thoughts

The question of whether a manager should or may participate in agile retrospectives depends on various factors and there are different opinions in the agile community. But what if you have no choice? The team manager wants to attend the sprint retrospective. Let’s take a closer look at all this.

The basic rule is probably clear: managers should tend to stay away from the retro, because they are very likely to limit openness in the team. At the same time, in a perfect world, managers are in a way part of the team, are servant leaders and also have a relationship of trust with their employees. So what to do? 

There is also the question in some Scrum certifications: “The team manager wants to participate in the sprint retrospective. What should you do?”

The correct answer according to the test is: “Suggest another forum where the manager can meet with the team.” This should also be the first impulse in principle. In addition, the need should be questioned: Why does the manager want to participate in the retro at all? Perhaps the thirst for knowledge can be satisfied in other ways.

At the same time, if a manager wants to take part in Retros, see this as an opportunity. Surely he/she can help you with a few of your obstacles. 

Also, see it agile: An experiment should be worth him/her coming along once. Let’s see how it works - that’s exactly how you learn empirically.

So if the team manager wants to attend the sprint retrospective, you can maximize the probability of success with the following tips and mental models.

• Set clear expectations:

  • Transparency is a key value in agile methods. When a manager participates in the retrospective, this can influence the openness of team members. Some members may be reluctant to express their opinions or concerns if they fear that the manager may interpret their contributions negatively. Discuss the expectations for the manager’s participation with the team and the manager in advance. Clarify what role the manager will play and how much influence they should have on the discussion.

• Emphasize the role of observer:

  • If so desired, emphasize the manager’s role as an observer, serving to understand and support the team’s dynamics rather than actively intervening in the discussions. This can help to maintain the trust of the team. At the same time, emphasize the observer effect: It is clear that the manager’s presence alone is likely to influence the discussion. The effect may therefore be weakened somewhat.

• Provide feedback after the retrospective:

  • Ask the manager to share their feedback and observations after the retrospective, rather than during the session - or perhaps never. This allows the team to at least get a sense of what exactly the manager was able to or wanted to take away from the retrospective at its core.

There are other tips you can take into account in this context and when considering whether managers should be in retros.

• Emphasize self-organization:

• • Emphasizes the importance of the team’s self-organization. The manager should understand that the main purpose of the retrospective is for the team itself to identify and implement improvements.
  • At the same time, of course, it can also be seen as an opportunity to actively involve the manager. Some arguments support the participation of managers to provide leadership support and coaching. A manager can bring valuable feedback and perspectives from a higher level to help the team improve: What external factors beyond our control as a team are holding us back right now? What could the manager help us with?
  • Corresponding questions could also make your retrospective workshop more productive. However, it should not end in a “justification monologue” by the manager. Instead, the manager must be clear that it is only about understanding and taking away tensions in the team in order to discuss them at a higher level if necessary.

• offer workshops and training courses:

  1. Provides the manager with the opportunity to participate in workshops or training aimed at deepening understanding of agile principles and practices. This can help to create a common basis for collaboration.

• Influence through questions, not instructions

  • If the manager interferes: Instead of giving instructions, focus on questions that stimulate reflection. An example: Instead of saying “We need to do this faster”, ask: “How could we improve our processes to move faster?”. This strengthens the focus on self-organization and commitment.

Finally, there is a specific tool that could help you with a retrospective with managers, for example by keeping the data anonymous and helping with data-driven continuous improvement.

"Many team members are afraid to speak up!"

Solve this challenge

"We discover too many unexpected issues & bugs at a late stage!"

Solve this challenge

"Why does it sometimes take me hours to prepare a simple retrospective?"

Solve this challenge

Agile sprint retrospective tools can also help you to conduct a constructive retrospective with your manager. For example, managers are often data-driven. This is exactly where Echometer can help you by incorporating a Health Check survey into your retrospective. This makes team development more transparent and measurable. In addition, Echometer can guarantee the anonymity of opinions.

Echometer is a digital tool that helps agile team leads with agile retrospectives and team Health Checks. Whether remote, hybrid or on-site: it makes team coaching measurable and professionalizes your work while saving you a lot of work. Just take a look at our website to find out more: www.echometerapp.com.

If you can hire or fire, stay out of the team’s retrospective.

Aino Vonge Corry, Retrospectives Antipatterns

So, can or should a manager attend the sprint retrospective or retro? Difficult: The integration of managers in retrospectives requires a sensitivity for agile principles and the observer effect. By focusing on openness, questions and reinforcing Scrum values, you can mitigate the potentially negative effect of managers in retros. However, managers tend to be out of place in retros.

Finally, again the hint: If you want to try out how it feels to further develop your team with our tool: You can start an agile retrospective without login in the following, in this case the “Keep, Stop, Start” workshop. 

Alternatively, simply forward our website to the responsible colleagues: www.echometerapp.com.

How to

Keep stop start retro: How the retro works

1. Random Icebreaker (2-5 minutes)

   Echometer provides you with a generator for random check-in questions.

2. Review of open actions (2-5 minutes)

   Before starting with new topics, you should talk about what has become of the measures from past retrospectives to check their effectiveness. Echometer automatically lists all open action items from past retros.

3. Discuss retro topics

   Use the following open questions to collect your most important findings. First, everyone does it themselves, covered. Echometer allows you to reveal each column of the retro board individually in order to then present and group the feedback.

   • Continue: What should we keep?
   • Stop: What should we stop doing?
   • Start: What should we start doing?

4. Catch-all question (Recommended)

   So that other topics also have a place:

   • What else would you like to talk about in the retro?

5. Prioritization / Voting (5 minutes)

   On the retro board in Echometer, you can easily prioritize the feedback with voting. The voting is of course anonymous.

6. Define actions (10-20 minutes)

   You can create a linked action via the plus symbol on a feedback. Not sure which measure would be the right one? Then open a whiteboard on the topic via the plus symbol instead to brainstorm root causes and possible measures.

7. Checkout / Closing (5 minutes)

   Echometer enables you to collect anonymous feedback from the team on how helpful the retro was. This creates the ROTI score ("Return On Time Invested"), which you can track over time.

Keep stop start retro

Continue: What should we keep?

Stop: What should we stop doing?

Start: What should we start doing?

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