Productivity
Dec 10, 2023
How I stepped up my retro with 6 steps
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Written by Maggie-May Hosking, originally published on LinkedIn.
Rewind approximately 10 months ago.
Every two weeks roll around and we get together to conduct our retrospectives..
“What went well”..”What didn't go well”..”Goals!”
We were stuck in a rut of complaining and unable to take action.
What has really struck me about scrum, is the emphasis on the pillars of scrum and how everything is structured around them. Transparency, Inspection and Adaptation. While the team I joined had 2 of the 3, the entire objective of being able to adapt, and improve kind of went out the window somewhere along the line.
We were able to reflect on what went well and form long lists of what didn't go well, with a brief list of goals that weren't really in sync or related to many of the problems the team was facing, but unable to adapt, to translate the items into actionable items.
Moreover, we were all in agreement that the format of our retros wasn't doing any justice, and was really facilitating a complaining session without any action.
I was in the process of completing my SEU’s (Scrum Educational Units) and I came across an amazing article titled “Step up your retro game with six steps”, I am so grateful for Scrum Alliance as this resource truly has proven to be an asset and has subsequently reshaped our retrospectives.
Very simply:
I wanted to introduce a fun way to start our retrospectives and decided to have each team member list an adjective and an object to describe the sprint. This helped ground them in the retro and get their minds reflecting on the past sprint. It has been incredibly insightful, with each member explaining their word choice, followed by a group vote on the most fitting adjective and object. We ultimately settled on two words, which uniquely became the name of our sprint. Here's an example of what that looks like.
I've loved seeing this take form, each name giving shape and form to our sprint!
Step 5 was the key to allowing us as a team to begin adapting, to begin taking action. It also directly corresponded with Step 2 and how we were gathering data. Prompted by the article I decided to change the way in which we ask questions, in an attempt to get the team to begin thinking about solutions and how we can take action as a team to improve and problem solve “what didn't go well”. We changed our generic “what went well” to “what we should keep doing”. “What didn't go well” with “what we should start doing” and “what we should stop doing”.
As you can see these prompts immediately focus on Step 5 actionable tasks. Initially our team found it difficult to list tasks for our “start, stop and keep” format. But once understood, a stream of ideas began to flow in. Our last step was to take our stagnant goal column, and again translate them into actionable tasks, we decided to begin adding them as items in our sprint. Making them visible and attainable.
Fast Forward to today: Switching our prompts to a more action focused phrase, has begun to enable and facilitate us as a team to begin adapting. Adding items to our sprint board has made the actionable tasks more tangible and achievable! Including ice breakers has given our team a unique and fun activity to name our sprint and furthermore stimulate engagement and begin generating thoughts around what to start, stop and keep doing.
One thing I know to be true, is that there are so many unique approaches to facilitate retrospectives, and I know that I am only scraping the surface with my teams. I believe that if each scrum ceremony can be implemented well, and each member continuously works on improving and learning, that scrum will live up to its name every time. While we as a team are always finding new ways to improve, our retro’s too also have room for improvement.
I look forward to 2024 and learning more ways to jazz up our retros and ensure we as a team efficiently and effectively inspect and adapt transparently together!
