The Agile Retrospective Effectiveness Scale (ARES) is a validated assessment dedicated to improving how you prepare, conduct, and get value out of your retrospectives. ARES is based on proven patterns, behaviors and norms that have helped thousands of teams and organizations improve how they work.
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Effective retrospectives are an essential part of an organization’s continuous improvement efforts. By regularly inspecting how the team works, identifying improvement opportunities, and taking action to remove impediments, the team improves morale, day-to-day operations, and business outcomes.
Created as a joint effort by Comparative Agility and Retrium, the questions included in ARES were crafted with input from Esther Derby, Diana Larsen, and hundreds of agilists around the world to validate the significance of the findings.
ARES will quickly reveal how your team perceives it is doing against 8 key dimensions associated with effective Retrospectives. Use the insights as an invitation to a conversation among members of the team – and supercharge your Retrospectives by improving where it matters.
Agile Retrospective Effectiveness Scale
At its very essence, becoming more agile requires continuously improving how you work – to be better today than you were yesterday. Conducting effective Retrospectives is a time-tested, practical way to manifest continuous improvement at all levels of your organization. But how do you conduct Retrospectives that are consistently productive and provide meaningful change? What are the norms and behaviors that convert a Retrospective from a “meeting” to a transformative event? ARES is built on expertise from the world’s preeminent Retrospective thought leaders and observable results from thousands of teams that successfully leverage Retrospectives as an essential element of a continuous improvement strategy.
The Agile Manifesto, 2021
My team’s retrospectives are worth the time that we invest in the meeting
My team’s retrospectives build trust
My team has a retrospective at regular intervals
I feel more connected to my team after our retrospectives
I believe all the members of my team feel comfortable bringing up difficult topics during our retrospectives
My team’s retrospective action items have a due date
My team’s retrospectives are worth the time that we invest in the meeting
Opposing viewpoints can co-exist in our retrospectives
My team’s retrospectives produce direct action items for improvement
Identify insights from an assessment instrument created by the foremost experts in the Retrospective domain.
Give your teams a voice – and identify areas of improvement, accelerate improvement efforts and embed a culture of continuous improvement.
Give your teams a voice – and identify areas of improvement, accelerate improvement efforts and embed a culture of continuous improvement.
Gauge effectiveness across teams in your organization and benchmark against other organizations in your industry
Retrium helps teams make better decisions together by facilitating engaged and psychologically safe agile retrospectives. Founded in 2015 by David Horowitz and Ryan Detweiler, Retrium has helped thousands of companies around the world realize the benefit of effective online retrospectives by enabling anonymous contributions and voting that prioritize the most important topics for discussion. For more information about Retrium, please visit retrium.com.
Comparative Agility is the world's largest agility assessment instrument, fueling data-driven continuous improvement strategies at multiple organizational levels through knowledge and domain-specific intelligence.Our mission is to help our clients continuously improve their business performance through relevant data and actionable insight. To learn more about Comparative Agility, please visit www.comparativeagility.com.
Management consultant, leadership coach & expert in organizational change
Co-Author, Agile Retrospectives
Consultant, mentor, speaker
Founder, Agile Fluency® Project
Co-Author, Agile Retrospectives
