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Keeping Retrospectives Fresh
Alida Cheung
During initial adoption, teams focus on…
Learning the new game rules
Changing their mindset
Putting something which may seem counter-intuitive
into practice
As teams mature…
Their challenges evolve
They go deeper
Problems can become harder to solve
Retrospective becomes mundane and its effectiveness
wanes
“What didn’t go well” may only identify the symptoms
but not the cause
Six ways to keep retrospectives fresh
Picture This
Timeline
The Five Hows
Adding Appreciation to the Mix
Fish Bowl
Weather Forecast
Picture This
Adopted from Collaboration
Explained by Jean Tabaka
Picture This
How it works
Divide the team into groups of 3 or 4
Give the groups 5 minutes to show how they feel
about the sprint in drawing
Take note as they explain their pictures. Facilitate
the discussion to dive into the root cause if
necessary. Find out what particularly drove any
strong positive or negative images
Put up the pictures and ask the team to sum up the
results
Picture This
Short ofhours
Hard to reachgoals
Why it works The new format vitalizes and
energizes the retrospective
It provides people another way to
look at a situation and a different
medium to express it
It taps into our right brain, our
intuitive and insightful mind that
see things more holistically,
balancing out the judgment or
even prejudice
It is easy to reference in the future (e.g. Remember that cookie
jar?)
Picture This
Support cases seteveryone on fire
We made progress on automation
Many open bugsbut burndown chartlooks good
When to use You feel the retrospective has gone stale
The team is stuck at the mechanics of the retrospective
Timeline
Adopted from Diana and Esther’s Excellent Retrospective Adventures at Agile 2008
Timeline
How it works
Draw a line that represents the sprint
Ask the team to recall what happened over the
course of the sprint – events, metrics, features,
stories, meetings, surprises, and decisions, etc. –
and put them on the timeline
Facilitate the identification of any correlation, cause-
and-effect, or pattern, etc. and the discussion
Timeline
Why it works Provides a holistic picture of the sprint
Visually reliving the sprint chronologically helps the team
discover cause and effect, missed opportunities, and areas of
improvement
When to use The sprint is particularly difficult, hectic, chaotic, and/or
stressful
The Five Hows
Adopted from an exercise at
the UX Retreat in 2010
The Five Hows
How it works
Similar to “The Five Whys” by Sakichi Toyada
Pick one issue or pain point
Keep exploring on how to solve the previous answer
till actionable items are reached
For example, Q - “How can we deliver reliably?”
A - “We need to complete our tasks consistently.”
Q - “How do we complete our tasks consistently?”
A - “We need to handle distractions effectively.”
Q - “How do we hand distractions effectively?”
…
The Five Hows
When to use The team wants to deep dive into and fix one pain point (likely
to be recurring)
Add Appreciation to the Mix
Adopted from Diana and Esther’s Excellent Retrospective Adventures at Agile 2008
Add Appreciation to the Mix
How it works
It is a variation to the traditional three-question
format
Instead of three, it has four feedback categories:
• Team proud of
• Team sorry about
• Appreciation
• New Ideas
Add Appreciation to the Mix
Why it works “Team proud of” and “Team sorry about” encourage reflection
as a team
“Appreciation” provides team members an opportunity to show
their appreciation towards each other, building a stronger team
“New idea” allows the team to decide what improvements they
want to work on
When to use Any time
Fish Bowl
Fish Bowl
Fish Bowl is a form of dialog used frequently in
participatory events like Open Space and Unconference
It has been used successful in retrospectives with a
team of as few as seven people
Fish Bowl
How it works
Pick one topic
Put four to five chairs in the front of the room
People in those chairs will carry out a discussion
One chair remains empty at all time
A member of the audience can come up and occupy
the empty chair and join the conversation. At that
point, one person leaves the discussion to empty
his/her chair
Facilitate the discussion to a conclusion as
appropriate
Fish Bowl
When to use Fish Bowl introduces some structure into a discussion which
may otherwise be heated or emotionally charged
Weather forecast
Adopted from Diana and Esther’s Excellent Retrospective Adventures at Agile 2008
Weather Forecast
How it works At the beginning of the retrospective, ask each team member
to describe how he/she feels about the sprint in terms of the
weather
Conduct the retrospective
Base on the result of the retrospective, especially in areas the
team choose to work on, ask each team member to predict the
weather for the next sprint
Weather Forecast
Why it works Many times you will see a range of weather report or forecast,
from sunny to stormy, providing powerful insight in how
different members react and respond to the same reality
Offers an opportunity to further explore specific issue or topic
When to use Any time
This is not a complete retrospective by itself but can add flavor
and insight to one
References
Tabaka, J. (2006). Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for
Software Project Leaders. Addison-Wesley Professional.
Derby, E. & Larsen, D. (2006). Agile Retrospectives: Making Good
Team Great. Pragmatic Bookshelf.
Alida Cheung
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/alida-cheung/0/683/211
Twitter: AlidaCheung
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