We Just Cancelled a Sprint Retrospective. It’s a Disaster

<p>I feel tense in my shoulders today. This is because I failed to speak up in the stand-up. I didn&rsquo;t say what I know to be true and let myself and my whole team down.</p> <p>As a result of my actions, the team won&rsquo;t improve and we will be unable to deliver as many features as we should be able to.</p> <p>So what is the crime of&nbsp;<strong><em>The Secret Developer&nbsp;</em></strong>this time?</p> <blockquote> <p>I didn&rsquo;t speak up when we cancelled the Sprint Retro.</p> </blockquote> <h1>The Working Environment</h1> <p>I&rsquo;ve been working at my current position for something like a year. To say I&rsquo;m not enjoying it is something of an understatement and I&rsquo;m just starting to come to the truthful conclusion that it&nbsp;<strong><em>isn&rsquo;t me it&rsquo;s them</em></strong>.</p> <blockquote> <p>Today I feel that I&rsquo;ve got just a little more evidence that the correct conclusion has been reached.</p> </blockquote> <p>Our feature team has just started four-week sprints because we failed time and time again to deliver work in two-week sprints.</p> <h1>The Situation</h1> <p>At the end of today&rsquo;s standup at the end of the sprint, we had the following questions from the tech lead and product management.</p> <blockquote> <p>Is there anything you want to raise today for the retro or we can cancel.<br /> I don&rsquo;t, but it&rsquo;s really a question for the team.<br /> I&rsquo;ll ask the Scrum Master later.<br /> [to the team] Anyone want to raise anything?</p> </blockquote> <blockquote> <p>We were met with a stunning wall of silence to this last question. Now I&rsquo;m of the opinion that retrospectives should (near)&nbsp;<strong><em>never</em></strong>&nbsp;be canceled.</p> </blockquote> <p><a href="https://medium.com/@tsecretdeveloper/we-just-cancelled-a-sprint-retrospective-its-a-disaster-7ebf18adc800"><strong>Website</strong></a></p>