Book: Esther Derby, Diana Larsen “Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great”

When I wrote about Alexey Krivitsky’s book Agile Retrospective Kickstarter a month ago, I mentioned that much of his work is based on the work of Esther Derby and Diana Larsen (as he openly acknowledges in his book). At that time, I also promised to write separately about the book by these women facilitators. So here I am, fulfilling that promise.

I read the book in English, although in 2017, it was also published in Russian by Dmitry Lazarev Publishing under the title “Agile Retrospectives: Turning Good Teams into Great Teams.”

Why do teams need retrospectives? I’ve already written about this in detail elsewhere, but here’s a brief reminder: retrospectives help teams learn from their mistakes and grow. Without them, no Agile methodology can operate at full capacity.

Esther and Diana explain how to make such meetings as productive as possible, drawing from their many years of experience and unique insights. It is in this book that they propose the five-stage format for retrospective meetings, which Alexey Krivitsky actively adopts and promotes in his own book.

A comparison of these books is inevitable, so I will highlight the main points present in the “original source” but either missing or not explored in as much detail in Alexey’s book:

• The authors emphasize that you cannot simply walk into a new team and immediately start implementing “trendy methodologies” without understanding who the team members are and what challenges they face. They outline how to conduct preparatory work: how to communicate, who to speak with, what questions to ask, identifying pain points, assessing relationships within the team and with other colleagues, and so forth.
• For a new team, it’s essential to set basic “working rules” for meetings, such as “no open laptops,” “don’t check your phone during the meeting,” and similar principles. Furthermore, the team should enforce these rules themselves and even come up with consequences for violators.
• Every retrospective meeting must have a clear purpose. However, these goals should be set correctly to steer the team toward constructive outcomes, avoiding activities like “throwing blame around” or coming up with excuses.
• Managers don’t always participate in these meetings. However, the mere presence of a senior leader can create stress for the team or cause them to shut down. The authors explain how to prepare managers for such meetings and guide them during the process so they don’t inadvertently “break” the flow with their usual behavior or attitudes.
• They dedicate specific attention to creating an Action Plan—the list of activities and follow-ups that arise from the meeting. This includes how to properly formulate tasks and determining who should be responsible for documenting the meeting (hint: it should not be the facilitator, as this diminishes the team’s sense of “ownership and control”).

The first part of the book is entirely devoted to explaining the structure of a retrospective meeting and its five stages. It’s written in a very engaging way and genuinely inspires the reader. Unlike Alexey, who states that one and a half hours are usually sufficient for most such meetings, the authors are not so categorical. I fully share their perspective: it all depends on the goals, the team’s habits, and the specific stage of the retrospective being conducted. Sometimes even an entire day may not be enough.

However, the section listing activities for each of the five stages seems to disrupt the rhythm. Up until this point, everything was going well, and suddenly it becomes somewhat dull and tedious. The energy of reading diminishes immediately.

The activities themselves are good and useful. They are described in great detail, down to the individual steps and even estimated times required for each activity (something missing from Alexey Krivitsky’s “cheat sheet”). This is helpful, of course, although the times given are averaged. Still, the descriptions are so dry that reading through them is challenging. Moreover, while the authors list the facts, they say almost nothing about the emotional component—why a particular exercise might be beneficial for engaging with a team on an emotional level or how to manage the team’s engagement by correctly sequencing activities. Many exercises are particularly valuable because they help open up and relax people, preparing them for the next, more critical exercises.

Although almost every activity is accompanied by an example from the authors’ practice, these examples don’t add much value. They often don’t highlight the specific nuances of the exercise itself but instead seem to say, “Here’s another team we worked with.” This approach either fails to qualify as an example (instead appearing as an attempt to boost the authors’ credentials) or simply repeats previously described steps with a real-world team. The value of such examples is unclear.

In the book’s final section, Esther and Diana offer several general tips on conducting and preparing for meetings (the advice on working with managers comes from this part). This material is once again presented in a more engaging way. They also include several interesting examples, which are not necessarily about retrospective meetings but rather about working with teams. I particularly enjoyed the example on addressing rumors. Whenever a rumor surfaced in the company, anyone who heard it would write it down on a sticky note and attach it to a special “rumor board.” Then, anyone interested could investigate the facts behind the rumor. The verified facts would also be added to the board alongside the original rumor. Over time, people quickly realized that most rumors were unreliable, highlighting the need to verify information. Simultaneously, awareness of genuinely useful facts increased.

To summarize, the book is definitely worth reading. However, if we compare it to Alexey’s book (apologies for constantly making this comparison), I would argue that the “remake” outshines the original. While Alexey’s book is not a remake but rather an inspired work based on Esther and Diana’s, Alexey managed to make his book shorter, more dynamic, and more focused on critical nuances. On the other hand, Alexey leaves out many introductory elements about the five-stage format and preparatory work with the team.

In conclusion, both books are worth reading as a tandem. They complement each other beautifully.

My rating: 4/5

Esther Derby, Diana Larsen “Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great”

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