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