The ultimate guide to effective yet fun retrospectives

A collaboration between Hike One and De Voorhoede.

OK, Scrum Masters. Be honest, do you ever find yourself thinking; “Yikes, retrospective”? And do you find yourself quickly drawing a plus and a minus on the board, throwing some sticky-notes and pens on the table, thinking… phew, done! Meeting prepared 👌.

What if you would have a list of retrospective styles and methods to choose from? We at De Voorhoede and Hike One have combined our extensive experiences with retrospectives to come up with a list of effective yet FUN exercises to execute with the team during retros!

First of all: a retrospective is a great way to pause, take a breath, and look back at the previous sprint or period. We use it in our scrum projects, but also to evaluate other kinds of projects.

We assess the current way of working in order to identify learnings and become an even better team. That being said, please don’t consider a retrospective to be a meeting only for highlighting things that need attention or improvement. It’s also the time to reflect on what’s going well and compliment each other.

Your role as a Scrum Master in this process is:
To put it short: besides planning and facilitating the retrospective (time-box, arrange rooms and necessities), as a Scrum Master you make sure everybody understands the goal of the retrospective and everybody feels included and that they can be as open and honest as possible. You’re not just participant but also the moderator.

Below you will find a check-list for your convenience:

• Create a pleasant and open environment;
• Open the meeting with a short introduction;
• Discuss the status of the action points that came up in the previous meeting;
• Explain the type of retrospective you will execute. While you facilitate you make sure everyone has the space to discuss whatever they want to discuss — without going into detailed discussion.
• As a facilitator, dig deep and make sure that you understand the exact point a team member tries to make.
• You’re also responsible of time-boxing the meeting and making sure that the action points are written down and assigned to a team member. Create tickets if necessary.
• Ask the team how they thought this retrospective went (evaluate together).

We grouped our most effective yet fun retrospectives in the following categories:

A) Start of a Project
B) In Between
C) Mixing it up
D) End of a Project

The Classic (A):
Write a plus and a minus (or use emoticons 😃/ 😞) on each end of the board and ask the team the question: “What went well (+) and what can we improve (-)?” .

The Food-Candy One (B):
Get a bag of your favourite yet different coloured type of candy (think M&Ms, Skittles or winegums). Make sure every colour has a different ‘task’.
For example:

• What went well & thus we should continue;
• What didn’t go well and thus we should stop with;
• New idea: implement ASAP;
• Activities we should do more;
• Activities we should do less.

Answer the statement of the colour of your candy and enjoy!

Sailboat / Kite (A/D):
The team is represented by a boat, the boat is influenced by four factors:

• The island ahead is the goal or vision the team is heading towards;
• The wind blows in the sails and helps the team further;
• The anchor delays the team;
• The rocks are the risks ahead.

TPRC (B):
Divide the board in four cross-sections: Team, Process, Result and Communication, divide each section with a plus and minus.

The A-team:
As you might recall, there are four main characters in the old yet classic A-team series (can you name them by heart?)

• Face: visibility / results
• Murdock: particularities
• B.A.: group transport / collaboration
• Hannibal: future goals and plans

Add positive and negative points to each character, group them and discuss.

The Pizza (B) 🍕:
Every slice is a question for the team to answer.

• Which things should we keep doing?
• Which things should we do more?
• Which things should we do less?
• Which things should we start doing?
• Which things should we stop with?

Keep the list below in mind for or all retrospectives:

• Let the team group the tickets
• Use 5x ‘why’ to come to the core of a comment
• Inform the team to think about some pointers according to the chosen methodology so the team is prepared and feels less put on the spot.
• We use Dropbox Paper a lot because it’s an easy tool to track statuses, assign members and attach pictures of the outcome.
• Let the team assign a number (1–10) to evaluate the retrospective and jot down the average in the Paper.
• Everyone is only ‘allowed’ to put 3 sticky notes on the wall, this ensures that the person prioritises the sticky notes which can make it easier time-box, especially when you want to execute retro’s in a larger group.
• Try and organise your retrospective outside of the office, perfect for the Thursday afternoon?

Excited to execute retrospectives at your own office?

Contact : Vera Lusink → veralusink@gmail.com

Originally published at https://medium.com on May 23, 2018.