This is a retrospective I ran last week which I thought I’d share as it seemed to work quite well.
Before the retrospective I provided participants with a simple Word document template and asked them to identify their top 5 issues (one per template) and for each issue suggest as many solutions as possible. The template is to ensure participants can be as anonymous as possible.
Before getting into the top 5’s I did a quick energy seismograph (found here):
- Draw a line with each day of the iteration marked
- Ask the team to add significant events to the time line.
- Once these have been exhausted ask each team member to draw a line on the chart, above the line being positive and below the line being negative to show how they felt throughout the iteration
In this instance it showed that generally the team was very happy. However at one point everybody’s line dipped into the negative which coincided with some release failures near the end of the iteration. Whilst this only confirmed what everyone was already saying I found it a really useful exercise as it’s quick, confirms the biggest issue/s and is very good at rooting out any others which may have been forgotten/overlooked.
On to the top 5’s.
- Collect all the print-outs, spread them on the table and ask the team to group relevant issues.
- Ask for a title for each group, create a column for each one on a whiteboard (or flip chart sheets stuck to the wall) and place the associated print outs on the floor below.
- Get participants to form pairs (preferably with someone they don’t normally work too closely with) and give them three minutes with each column to come up with as many actions as they can and to write them in the column. Pairs are able to refer to the print outs and previous pairs’ actions for inspiration.
- After three minutes pairs move on to another column until all are exhausted.
- Go through all the actions so all participants are aware of them all.
- Give each participant three votes and ask them to choose their favourite actions (can use votes however they wish e.g. 3 on one action).
- Identify the most popular actions and ask for volunteers to own them. Make it clear it will be their responsibility to ensure they get completed before the next retrospective (tip: don’t choose too many actions and definitely no more than one action per participant).
As with all retrospcetive output I find the best way to ensure they get actioned is to stick them up on the wall somewhere everyone can see.
