Sprint Retrospective: Get Ready with Jira and Confluence

Have you ever felt your sprint retrospectives don’t drive enough actionable insights? A well-structured retrospective helps to identify what worked and what didn’t and improves team performance by 20% or more (according to Echometer). However, without thorough preparation, retrospectives can feel repetitive and miss their true potential.

This article will explore how combining Jira and Confluence can help prepare and hold an effective sprint retro. Let’s turn these sessions into opportunities for team growth, and bring data-driven insights and clear follow-up actions to every meeting.

If you need some tips on how effectively plan your next sprint, check out The Three Key Phases of Sprint Planning.

What is a Sprint Retrospective and How to Prepare?

Every past action can tell us something. No matter how small it is, each activity brings its input into how successful/unsuccessful we are. In our work, retrospectives help us to reflect on different efforts, whether it’s planning, teamwork, collaboration, or ensuring smooth processes and workflows.

A sprint retrospective is a collaborative meeting when a team gets together to reflect on the completed sprint and assess what went well, what didn’t, and how to improve in the future. It’s a perfect way to answer the question: What story your sprint can tell you? The insights you gain should drive incremental improvements that enhance productivity and team morale over time. 

The retrospective agenda includes the following items: reviewing what went well, identifying challenges, and creating an improvement plan.

There is one rule Jeff Sutherland emphasized in his book Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time. It sounds as follows: “Blame Is Stupid. Don’t look for bad people; look for bad systems – ones that incentivize bad behavior and reward poor performance.” If you want to have an effective and dedicated team, follow it.

The Role of Preparation

Coming into the meeting with relevant sprint data, gathered feedback, and organized documentation equips the team to dive straight into meaningful discussions. Jira can provide sprint metrics and issue statuses with valuable insights into performance. Documenting these insights in Confluence or a similar tool allows the team to track their progress over time, giving them a clearer view of recurring patterns and improvements.

Thorough preparation can help teams make their retrospectives more focused and actionable, setting the stage for continuous improvement. Let’s dive into the main steps to prepare before the retro and explore the tools that might help.

Pre-Retro Steps with Jira and Confluence

Effective retrospectives require a solid foundation of data and organization. The combination of Jira and Confluence for retrospectives enhances the process’s analysis and documentation aspects. Each tool brings unique strengths that, when used together, streamline retrospectives and help teams achieve actionable improvements. Here are the 3 main steps of preparation.

Step 1. Gather Sprint Data in Jira

1.1. Review Sprint metrics. Use Jira’s sprint reports, burndown charts, and velocity charts to get a clear view of the team’s performance. These metrics provide quantitative insights that can ground the retrospective in data, helping the team identify patterns in productivity, pacing, and issue resolution.

Here, we’ll explore different kinds of sprint reports.

♦ Sprint Report (built-in). Did the team complete the planned work for this sprint as expected?

This report provides insights into how well the team progressed toward completing all the planned tasks by the end of the sprint. The gray line represents the ideal burndown rate for the sprint. It shows the expected, steady decline in story points if the team completes work at a consistent rate each day. The red line shows the actual progress of story points burned (completed) over the sprint. Each downward movement on this line indicates work completed, and flat or upward movements indicate periods with no completed tasks or added scope.

Example. The Sprint Report on the screenshot above suggests that while the team progressed, the work did not follow the ideal burndown rate, and the sprint ended with the remaining story points. For future retrospectives, it may be helpful to analyze why certain tasks took longer, why some story points were added, or if any blockers affected productivity. This analysis can help the team make adjustments for upcoming sprints.

♦ Detailed Sprint Activity Report. How did the team progress over the sprint? What was done and when?

This report is available with Issue History for Jira. It provides a detailed record of each issue’s activity and transitions during the sprint. It goes beyond the typical sprint summary by diving into each issue’s specific status changes, assignments, comments, and time spent at various stages. This information helps teams gain a deeper understanding of issue flow and identify areas where the process may need adjustment.

You can add any other fields to analyze past activities that you are interested in.

Example. The report above provides a snapshot of how tasks progressed through the sprint, who worked on what, and changes to statuses, time spent, and assignees. By reviewing this data, the team can discuss potential bottlenecks, workload distribution, and task completion patterns, making it easier to identify areas for improvement in future sprints. For a complete analysis, examining the full list of issues would allow for deeper insights into these trends.

1.2. Analyze issue completion. Check the sprint backlog to see which issues were completed, carried over, or faced blockers. Flagging these specific issues can focus the conversation on challenges, helping the team to discuss potential solutions or adjustments for the next sprint.

Another way to analyze how many issues were transitioned to done or other statuses daily during the sprint is the Chart for Dynamic Status Update (available with Issue History for Jira). 

The chart shows the count of issues in each status (e.g., “To Do,” “In Progress,” “Done,” etc.) for each day during the sprint. This daily snapshot helps teams monitor the flow of tasks, making it easy to see how work is progressing toward completion.

1.3. Set up Jira Dashboard. Create a dedicated dashboard in Jira for retrospective data. Include key metrics such as story points, activities, and any custom KPIs relevant to team goals. A retrospective dashboard saves time by centralizing data and makes it easier for the team to visualize performance.

Step 2. Create a Confluence Template Page 

2.1. Create a Retrospective template: A standard retrospective template in Confluence keeps the meeting organized and efficient. Set up sections for key areas like “Start doing,” “Stop doing,” and “Keep doing.” This structure ensures that discussions are thorough and follow a logical flow.

2.2. Embed Jira Reports for easy reference. By embedding Jira charts and reports directly into Confluence, teams can view real-time data within the retrospective page. This saves time during the meeting and makes it easy for everyone to refer back to the metrics as they discuss areas for improvement.

Step 3. Encourage Pre-Meeting Feedback in Confluence

3.1. Invite team contributions ahead of time. Use Confluence’s comments feature to gather initial thoughts from team members before the retrospective. Prompt the team to add their observations, insights, and questions, allowing everyone to reflect on the sprint. This can lead to more thoughtful and well-rounded discussions.

3.2. Launch a poll for prioritizing topics. If there are multiple areas to discuss, create a poll in Confluence for team members to prioritize the topics they want to cover. This ensures that the most pressing issues are addressed, even if time is limited.

Takeaway

Each retrospective is a chance to build stronger, more effective team dynamics. Try incorporating these insights and tools to encourage open communication, address obstacles head-on, and celebrate progress. Jira’s reports offer visibility into task progress, bottlenecks, and workflow efficiency. Meanwhile, Confluence serves as a centralized space to document retrospective findings, action items, and learnings, ensuring transparency and accountability across the team.