Book: Alexey Krivitsky “Agile Retrospective Kickstarter”

Lately, I have been actively rereading various books and articles about Agile, and sometimes even exploring new material. In my opinion, Agile methodologies offer a lot of valuable practices, but one of the most useful ones is retrospectives—meetings where the team can look back, reflect on what has been done, analyze their experiences, and choose a few experiments to improve how things are done.

When people implement different Agile methodologies, they often forget that flexibility is not just about introducing daily stand-ups and breaking tasks into short sprints. It is fundamentally about learning from experience, adapting, and evolving. Without retrospectives, this does not work. That is precisely why retrospectives are so important. However, even these meetings can either be conducted properly and effectively or simply for the sake of formality (“because it is required”). For this reason, retrospectives are sometimes the subject of not only individual articles but even entire books.

Agile Retrospectives Kickstarter is one such book. Although it was written by a Russian-speaking author, Alexey Krivitsky, it was originally written in English, with the Russian version created later with the help of his colleagues.

The book itself is relatively short, just over 50 pages. The author, a practicing Agile coach, shares his experience in conducting retrospectives. However, he does not do this by providing an extensive set of examples or academic knowledge. Instead, he has compiled experiences from many sources into a highly condensed “retrospective cheat sheet,” offering a collection of possible exercises for conducting effective retrospective meetings. Alexey candidly admits from the outset that he did not invent any of these exercises (or at least does not remember inventing any) and even borrowed the methodology for breaking a meeting into several stages from other coaches. His contribution was to compile all of this into one relatively short guide that can be kept handy and used whenever preparing for a retrospective.

Moreover, at the end of the book, Alexey provides a list of recommended reading, and it’s evident that much of the material he distilled into this guide comes from these books. For instance, the approach with its defined stages and many of the activities are described in Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen. However, it’s hard to criticize Alexey for this—he openly acknowledges it and strongly recommends that book (which, by the way, I also plan to write about later because it’s well worth reading and has notable differences from Alexey’s work).

As I mentioned, Alexey Krivitsky’s entire book is just over 50 pages long. But those pages are packed with insights and inspiration. Even someone unfamiliar with conducting retrospectives could start running them effectively based on these 50 pages. I must admit that much of what I do is quite similar, using exercises that are close in spirit, but I still find this cheat sheet incredibly useful.

The book describes five stages of a retrospective meeting: preparation, gathering data, generating insights, decision-making, and closing. All of these stages are important (especially decision-making, because a retrospective without actionable decisions is not a retrospective). For each stage, Alexey provides a few potential activities (though in practice, some work best when paired because they complement each other well). In essence, the majority of the book is a concise description of these exercises, explaining how they work, their purpose, and which audiences they are best suited for.

When preparing for a meeting, you select the activities that best align with your meeting goals and your team’s needs. The author claims that an average meeting takes about one and a half hours to cover all the stages. I must say, this depends heavily on various factors, including the team’s cohesion, its willingness to follow structured rules, the frequency of such meetings, and the activities themselves—some of which can be very time-intensive if you aim for excellent results. Of course, much also depends on the facilitator’s ability to keep the meeting within time and goal constraints.

Finally, I want to touch on the Russian version specifically. I first read the Russian translation and later skimmed through the English original. Some of the translation choices impressed me, but there were moments when I felt the language in the Russian version could use some editing to improve its clarity and flow.

A separate downside is the issue with links. The book was written several years ago, and Alexey provides links to supplementary materials, some of which are now unavailable (the links are broken). This is unfortunate but doesn’t significantly detract from the book’s value.

I highly recommend this book. You are unlikely to find a more practical guide to retrospectives in terms of useful information per page. That said, be sure to explore the books Alexey recommends at the end. I will certainly write about at least some of them in the future.

My rating: 4.5/5

Alexey Krivitsky “Agile Retrospective Kickstarter”

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