Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Use it every retrospective
Comment: I refer to the activities in the book all the time. It really gives a fresh look at the retrospective and keeps the team engaged. It's very easy to come out with some actions to carry forward which the team is committed to doing.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Reality Check
Comment: After the first 100 pages, I was ready to give this book a single star. Then it made its way back by producing some stimulus in the center of the book, basically talking about some techniques for eliciting and then analyzing feedback (made it back to a 4, 5 is ludicrous just from the content perspective, this thing is thin in every sense of the word). But then, it fell back to a 3 because ultimately the many examples are laid out as if they were patterns, but there is little to no structure. Finally, the conclusion section goes back to some of the silliness of the beginning. What I am referring to as silliness is the constant enveloping of process suggestions with new agey psychobabble. I found that 80% of the time, this additional stuff was noise.
Ultimately, I was left convinced (as probably all who have done iterative could easily be) that retrospectives are a good thing, but a strong conviction that they could be done better than what is being espoused here. There are a few good ideas, and the overall presentation is good. That's all.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Extremely Helpful
Comment: This book is a great resource for anyone who wants to lead a retrospective with their team. I am impressed with how much valuable information it conveys in a short, non-threatening, and highly readable format! It is a resource that I will use again and again. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning more about team retrospectives.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Project-oriented programmers must have this.
Comment: Project retrospectives can help educate a team by providing a clear review of what went right or wrong on a project, and why - but usually they are held at the end of a project after its completion, offering insights for the next project only. Agile retrospectives are incremental during the course of the project and can serve to strengthen courses and identify problems along the way: AGILE RETROSPECTIVES explains and explores the methodology and techniques for producing such analysis through the life of the project. Project-oriented programmers must have this.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent advice for those desiring more frequent, shorter, better retrospectives
Comment: One of the challenges facing an agile team that holds a retrospective at the end of each one- to four-week iteration is how to keep the meetings fresh. When done this often retrospectives become redundant and team members often simply go through the motions. This is an excellent book that is full of so many ideas on how to conduct a retrospective that they will never become redundant.
I really like how the book is structured. It starts with three chapters about the purpose of retrospectives, how to tailor one for your team, and how to lead one. A general framework for retrospectives is laid out (gather data, generate insights, make decisions, and so on). The remaining chapters delve into these topics and each presents a variety of ways to perform the step. I picked up some wonderful ideas in these chapters that I have been able to successfully apply.
I'm not a big fan of the grueling multi-day retrospectives commonly held after a year (or more) of work on a big bang-style, waterfall project. This book perfectly fills a need, describing how to run much shorter and more effective retrospectives on a more frequent basis. I highly recommend it.
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