Azure DevOps Retrospective extension is staying and I’m very happy about that. Because I’m so pleased I’ve decided to write a post about it.
Retrospective extension
Just so you are all aware, Retrospectives is an Azure DevOps extension available in the marketplace. It’s for organizing sprint retrospective meetings and it’s really useful.
Sprint retrospectives are usually associated with the Scrum framework. However, they can be used with other Agile related frameworks as well.
Once installed, this extension is part of the Azure Boards feature in Azure DevOps. It appears below the Boards heading on the left-hand side of Azure DevOps.
Before your retrospective you can get your team to contribute their thoughts about how the sprint went. Which they do by adding items to the various sections of retrospective board.
Once items appear on the board, team members can vote for which retrospective items they agree on before the meeting. During the retrospective meeting the most voted for items get discussed.
I like the fact that with this extension you can generate backlog items directly into your backlog board from it. Afterwards, you can either work on the items during the next sprint or plan for them to be done at a later date.
Even if you do the meeting a different way you can still make use of this extension. Because you can add items to the retrospective board before the meeting and afterwards add any backlog items required.
Its layout is similar to other boards within Azure DevOps. So, if you’ve made the choice to manage your boards within Azure DevOps this extension will fit in nicely.
Of course, if you still manage your boards elsewhere you can still use this extension in Azure DevOps. It just means that you cannot take advantage of its features.
You can read more about this extension in detail here.
Announcement
An announcement was made three weeks ago about the future of the Retrospectives extension at the top of the screen when it was opened.
It stated that at the end of May the extension would be removed from the Marketplace. In addition, existing installations would continue to work until they were removed.
Now I was very surprised about this because this extension is useful. In fact, I was so surprised that I tweeted about it as below.
However, when I opened Retrospectives extension a week later I saw the below announcement.
Retrospectives is staying on!
We have heard you! Due to the overwhelming response we have received from our users after the initial shut-down decision, we have decided to keep the extension alive. Retrospectives will continue to be available in the Marketplace.
Announcement that was made at the top of the Retrospectives screen
In the ‘Q & A’ section of the Retrospectives extension page others are also pleased about this. Which you can read in detail here.
Upcoming sessions
I’m glad that the Azure DevOps Retrospective extension is staying because it’s really useful.
In addition, it also means I can still use it as part of my session at the next SQLBits conference. Because it’s part of a session I am doing there with Sander Stad. Which you can read about in detail here.
You can also watch Sander and myself talk about using Azure DevOps with SQL Server in June. Because we will also be presenting our Azure DevOps Duet session online as part of the new SQL Friday initiative.
We will be presenting it on Friday 5th June at 12PM Central European Standard Time. You can read about the session in detail and register for it here.
Final word
I hope others out there are as pleased as I am about the fact that the Azure DevOps Retrospective extension is staying.
Of course, you’re more than welcome to comment about it staying below. In addition, if you use Azure DevOps and are using another method for retrospectives instead feel free to comment about it.
[…] Plus, it means you are able to install and test extensions from the marketplace before requesting them within your enterprise. Like the retrospective item that I talked about in a previous post here. […]