Evaluation of Reflective Behavior in Agile Product Development: A Theoretical Categorization to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Retrospectives in Engineering Teams

Reflection is an enabler for team learning and continuous adaption of used processes and methods. Although reflection is an integral part of agile development many engineers lack an understanding of reflective behavior and reflection competencies. In this paper, we perform a Case Study to analyze and measure the impact and outcome of structured reflection in engineering teams. The underlying question is whether the effectiveness of retrospectives can be derived from certain reflection behaviors and outcomes. Based on the findings we propose a theoretical categorization for reflection outcomes.