7 Agile Retrospective Questions in a SAFe context

Are you searching for SAFe agile retrospective questions? Great, because I have some for you!

Safe Agile Retrospective Questions (Scaled Agile)

The SAFe iteration retrospective

There is one special retrospective in the Scaled Agile Framework SAFe that is called the iteration retrospective. There are some differences to an ordinary Scrum Team Sprint Retrospective, which should not be the focus of this post.

In my view and opinion, overall it is still very similar to a classical retrospective.

An obvious difference here is that you as a team apparently work in a scaled agile context. This means, there are potentially a lot more team’s involved and the agile processes probably are a little more complex compared to individual teams.

This naturally changes the nature of the retrospective. And it leads me to a few SAFe agile retrospective questions that will help you to reflect on your team’s performance.

Some health check items for SAFe teams

The following questions are basically best practices of successful SAFe Scaled Agile Framework teams. They are intended to help you reflect on how well you are doing - and perhaps even measure your subjective progress over time.

Typically, every team member anonymously answers the following questions on a scale from 1 (Disagree completely) and 7 (Agree Completely).

• Vision: “As a team, we know exactly what our value contribution to the product vision is.”
• Flow of information: “As a team, we receive all the necessary information to achieve our goals.”
• Ü-collaboration: “We also work cross-functionally and successfully across team or department boundaries.”
• Customer orientation: “We know the challenges and problems of our customers.”
• Leadership & Management: “Our direct managers trust us as a team to solve problems independently.”
• Self-organisation: “As a team, we have enough freedom to organize our work independently.”
• Process: “Our iteration length is just right.”

The (initially anonymous) results for these SAFe Retrospective questions are then reflected upon. After you have shown the results of the individual questions, you can ask the group: “How do you explain the results? Feel free to make your own answer transparent.”

By the way - a standard format for agile retrospectives that works in scaled agile contexts is the Spotify Health Check Retrospective (more information under the link). Here you have an insight into some of the possible questions - and can use the Retro without login in Echometer without registering:

Note: This retrospective format asks for agreement with the given Health Check items on a scale.

• Speed: We get stuff done really quickly. No waiting, no delays.
• Processes: Our way of working suits us perfectly.
• Value: We deliver great stuff! We’re proud of it and our stakeholders are really happy.
• Other items (customizable)

Advantage of this approach

The great thing about including some of these health check items or sentences in your retrospective and measuring them: You can ask the same questions again a few months later and see how you have developed - in numbers!

Of course, these numbers are just based on subjective perceptions. But still, they are able to create a regular feeling of accomplishment which is great to foster the agile mindset in teams.

Conclusion - Questions for SAFe Retrospectives

The given SAFE Agile Retrospective Questions are obviously some of many foci you might set in our iteration retrospective. I recommend to research for more approaches and regularly iterate on it.

If you are searching for some more retrospective ideas, feel free to have a look at our 32 kickass retrospective formats an - there are also more examples of questions and Health Check Retrospectives (see above).