CAE Retrospectives & Continuous Improvement 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which retrospective technique asks team members to imagine the project has failed spectacularly and then identify what caused that failure?
- Pre-mortem (Futurespective) (Correct answer)
- Silent Writing
- Fishbone Diagram
- Start-Stop-Continue
Correct answer: Pre-mortem (Futurespective)
A pre-mortem (or futurespective) asks the team to project forward to a hypothetical failure and work backward to identify risks and causes.
Question 2: During a retrospective, the team identifies an improvement action but nobody volunteers to own it. What is the BEST response?
- Drop the action item since no owner exists
- Assign it to the Scrum Master by default
- Work with the team to find a volunteer or split responsibility (Correct answer)
- Escalate to management to assign an owner
Correct answer: Work with the team to find a volunteer or split responsibility
Unowned action items rarely get done; the facilitator should help the team negotiate ownership or shared responsibility to ensure follow-through.
Question 3: The '4Ls' retrospective format stands for:
- Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for (Correct answer)
- Listen, Learn, Lead, Level up
- Look back, Look forward, List issues, Link actions
- Loved, Loathed, Lingered, Launched
Correct answer: Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for
The 4Ls framework captures what team members Liked, Learned, Lacked, and Longed for during the iteration.
Question 4: A team's retrospective consistently produces the same action items sprint after sprint with little improvement. The MOST likely root cause is:
- Retrospectives are scheduled too infrequently
- Action items are not tracked or followed up between retrospectives (Correct answer)
- The team lacks creativity in generating ideas
- Management does not attend retrospectives
Correct answer: Action items are not tracked or followed up between retrospectives
When action items are not tracked or revisited, they are forgotten and the same issues resurface, creating a cycle of no improvement.
Question 5: Which Agile value most directly underpins the retrospective ceremony?
- Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
- Responding to change over following a plan (Correct answer)
- Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
- Working software over comprehensive documentation
Correct answer: Responding to change over following a plan
Retrospectives embody 'responding to change' by continuously adapting the team's process based on what is or isn't working.
Question 6: In a retrospective, 'affinity mapping' is used to:
- Rank action items by priority using voting dots
- Group related observations into themes to spot patterns (Correct answer)
- Assign each issue to a specific team member
- Measure team velocity over multiple sprints
Correct answer: Group related observations into themes to spot patterns
Affinity mapping clusters similar sticky notes or ideas into themed groups, making it easier to identify systemic patterns from many individual data points.
Question 7: The principle of 'inspect and adapt' is central to retrospectives because it:
- Guarantees the team will always deliver on time
- Creates a formal audit trail for stakeholders
- Drives iterative process improvement within each cycle (Correct answer)
- Eliminates the need for daily standups
Correct answer: Drives iterative process improvement within each cycle
Inspect and adapt means teams regularly examine their process and make targeted adjustments, which is exactly the purpose of a retrospective.
CAE Retrospectives & Continuous Improvement 2
Which retrospective technique asks team members to imagine the project has failed spectacularly and then identify what caused that failure?