I think retros are great. I think the idea of reflecting on how the work is going and coming up with ideas for continuous improvement is awesome.
However, I find that running the same retro format every time can make retros lose their impact. They are at risk of the team just turning up and going through the motions.
What I hope to get out of a retro
My aim when I run a retro is to check in on how the team are feeling everything is progressing and to come out with an action to work on until the next retro. How many actions and what they look like is a topic for another day though.
The retro idea
I’m sure most people have come across the retro format of “stop, start, continue” or a theme close to it.
“Stop, start, continue” is an excellent format and I often run retros with this format. However, even with positive teams, I find a lot of people struggle to put anything in the continue column, and when they do they rarely vote to talk about those points.
I propose a retro format where the only category of talking points is “continue”. Hopefully this should force people to remember what went well since the last retro. Furthermore, if the positive points are the only talking points available, the discussion will have to be on them.
Extreme programming
I’ve been in a lot of retros where we capture positive points but when it comes to discussion time, some people believe “there is no point in taking about the positives”. I think this is wrong. Just because something is good, it doesn’t mean it can’t be even better. Or if it’s not nurtured, that positive may not happen again.
I really like the extreme programming idea of, if something is good, do more of it and take it to the extreme.
How to run it
Starting a retro with a check in activity can really help to make sure everyone is engaged with the meeting. A quick check in I like to run is, going around the room, everyone is to say how they felt about the last sprint in one word.
Then ask people to write down all the positive things since the last retro on post it notes. As many as they can in 10 minutes or so.
Once everyone ideas are down, ask people to stick them on the wall, while giving a very brief description of them. Getting people to group any tickets they have as they stick them up can be beneficial here.
To decide which points to talk about, dot voting can be very helpful. Each person gets three points to put on any tickets they want to talk about, all the on a single ticket of they prefer. Then the tickets with the most points is the topic of discussion.
It’s great to try and get some actions out of the discussion so the team is improving s little bit each retro. I’ll be covering how to capture and track to actions in another post.
Be positive
Hopefully by mixing up your retro formats it’ll help keep the team engaged and get the creative juices flowing to help come up with great actions.
Also, if the team is going through a bit of a tough patch, by focusing on the positives, it might help to avoid the retro from becoming a bit a moaning session.