Retrospectives
During my last two projects, I’d run retrospectives at the end of each sprint. Nothing earth shattering there. But I got a lot of positive feedback from the team, and genuine excitement when it came time for each retrospective. I know I’m a slightly outgoing guy who likes to have a lot of fun, but something else was going on.
I asked the team what they liked about the retrospective formats I was using. You see, each week I ran it a slightly bit different.
One week, we’d follow The 4 L’s (http://retrospectivewiki.org/index.php?title=Four_L%27s_Retrospective).
Another week, we tried Turning The Table (http://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/february/iteration-retrospective-activity-turn-the-tables).
And another week we used – what seems to be a default – More/Same/Less (also known as Start/Stop/Continue), in some variation.
There were others, too, but it hopefully gives you an idea. And the reason I say that the third one seems to be a standard, is that the team informed me that this was the only way they’d done a retrospective before, with other agile coaches or scrum masters. Ever.
So, when I was brought into the team, each retrospective was new, fresh, and engaging. It wasn’t the same thing over and over. There were some ‘games’ where the output wasn’t as good as others. I’m not sure if it was because of that sprint or because of the format. I know for sure that I’ll try them all at least once more. And I do believe that not every format is right for every team. But getting to know the team certainly helps.
There are lots of places to get ideas. Here are a couple of my favourite places for ideas I’ve used (there are lots of others):
My learning from working with that team? Mixing it up really made it engaging for them. The liked the variety, and liked thinking about the last iteration in different ways. Something I’ll certainly continue.