But of course there’s always room for improvement. There’s a Zen saying I’m personally fond of: We’re all perfect just the way we are. And then use the exercise as a team to solve the problems you consider to be your biggest hurdles. So various means of doing so (group, individual, spoken, written) are often needed.īelow are a number of techniques teams can use to mix things up, to look from different angles and perspectives, create safe environments, make sure all voices are heard, and generate new insights.īefore starting a retrospective, teams should think about which exercises would be most suitable – for where the team is now, and for the just completed iteration. Individuals must feel comfortable enough to share their problems, opinions and concerns.Teams might just get bored when they are always doing retrospectives in a similar way.The things that each team deals with can be different in each iteration.Teams differ from each other so an approach the resonates with one team, might not work so well with another.There is no single retrospective exercise that always gives the best results. Why? A couple of reasons: Maybe they use a cross team retro, or invite “external agents” to their retro… If there are external issues affecting the teams, they need to be raised up within the organization so collectively we can address them. If they want to try a different way of working, it’s up to them to give feedback to each other, to discuss what happened, to learn, and to decide what to do. In retrospectives teams look for primarily for improvement actions that they can do themselves. Even with just the goals, we can use them to reflect on how things are going, what changed, what we can start experimenting with as potential improvements.Įven though other teams may have different outcomes, I'm looking forward for the opportunity to bring the lessons I learned to other teams and hopefully they'll get something out of it as well.The goal of the retro is to empower teams (groups of people focused on a common goal) to control their own destiny. Lastly, I came to the conclusion that what the team learned during the retrospective would be good inputs in upcoming retrospectives. Imagine getting that kind of information without the overhead of everyone in the team squeezing their brains out just to try to formulate the answers to those classical questions.Īnother interesting lesson I got out of the whole exercise was that encouraging everyone to reflect on what the team's goals are makes it easier for them to take ownership of their work considering they have a better understanding as to how it affects the fulfillment of the objectives they themselves identified and discussed. Identifying the goals of the team revealed answers to the classical retrospective questions such as what went well, what we can improve on, and what we can do in the next sprint. By the end of the discussion, I immediately saw that the simple act of extracting and discussing the goals provided the sailboat (the team) a strong wind helping it draw nearer to its destination. There may already be certain expectations coming from among them or from outside the team but for this particular exercise, I encouraged them to be creative, write on as many sticky notes as they can, and not overthink.Īfter the allotted time, we discussed each item. When it was time for the team to provide their inputs regarding the destination, I reminded them to think outside the box. However, I spent a bit more time making an emphasis on the destination which represents where the team is headed or what its goals/objectives are. ![]() I immediately tried the format out and at the beginning, I explained carefully to the team the different concepts commonly used in this format. ![]() I'm not exactly a fan of sailing but I saw that the concepts (e.g sailboat, wind, anchor, rock) behind this particular format is an opportunity to really draw insights out. I'm not referring only to the particular outcomes but how I help the team identify crucial points and what specific activities we did together in order to come up with a fruitful retrospective.Īnyway, I recently came across the idea of the sailboat retrospective which was pretty interesting for me. Recently, I told myself that I needed to make an effort in making sure that no two retrospectives are alike.
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