Excuses to Skip a Retro

A retro is ninety minutes in which a team writes the same three cards it wrote last time, in a slightly different colour, on a board that is described as anonymous and is not. There is a column for what went well, which fills up first and fastest, and a column for what didn't, which fills up with one brave sentence and then everyone looks at it. The reason to be relaxed about missing one is that retro value lives entirely in the follow-through, and follow-through is a written artefact. Adding your cards to the board and writing your point out properly is more useful than saying it aloud in the final four minutes while someone starts the wrap-up. If your action item from the last retro still has nobody's name on it, that is not a case for attending harder; it is the actual retro finding. The one thing not to do is skip silently and then complain in the corridor, which is how retros become a thing that a team does instead of improving. Contribute in writing, and skip with a clear conscience. Below are ten excuses to skip a retro, plus twenty in the generator.