  Agile methods, especially Scrum, have become staples of the modern software
development industry. Retrospective meetings are Scrum's instrument for process
improvement and adaptation. They are considered one of the most important
aspects of the Scrum method and its implementation in organizations. However,
Retrospectives face their own challenges. Agile practitioners have highlighted
common problems, i.e. headaches, that repeatedly appear in meetings and
negatively impact the quality of process improvement efforts. To remedy these
headaches, Retrospective activities, which can help teams think together and
break the usual routine, have been proposed. In this research, we present case
studies of educational and industry teams, investigating the effects of eleven
Retrospective activities on five identified headaches. While we find evidence
for the claimed benefits of activities in the majority of studied cases,
application of remedies also led to new headaches arising.
