Retros are awesome. The chance for a team to come together and review how things are going is a huge opportunity to improve.
They should be open, honest, and engaging. It’s very easy to forget that they should be engaging. That’s why I like to try different formats when I get the opportunity to run a retro.
The elevator pitch
A common retro format is “stop, start, continue”, or a variation on that theme. It’s a common format because it is effective. I think it encourages people to be honest while reminding them positivity is also important.
However, I often find that in a retro where people are asked to give as many ideas as they want, they feel obligated to come up with lots of ideas. Even ideas they don’t particularly want to discuss themselves. Then you use up a lot of time as people deliver all these ideas back to the group and then more time as they are grouped together.
In the “elevator pitch” retro, each participant gets just one idea to pitch to the group to discuss. This can help to make people edit their own ideas and focus on what is truly important to them.
As people are only delivering one potential discussion topic to the group, hopefully they feel like that have more time to fully explain their point and the group will better understand their idea. Furthermore, the time saved on grouping many ideas can be spent on further discussions.
My experience
I’ve found running the”elevator pitch” retro to be a useful format for a retro. Often when people are asked to quickly deliver all their ideas on post it notes to the team; they can go into great detail, using a lot of time, or they gloss over important ideas.
By giving each person an allotted time about the one point they want to talk about it can help to focus the discussion. The extra time to explain their point can also help the group to decide if they would like to discuss it further.
If anyone has any other retro ideas that have worked well for them I to our love to hear them!