As you all know I have been running retrospectives for several years and I can say I had the chance to learn from awesome facilitators during this time. Today I’d like to share with you my top 3 learnings.
Focus on the actions
In the end the success of a retrospective is measured by the quality of the resulting actions. Therefore it makes sense to invest a decent amount of time in discussing them and ensure alignment. A common mistake is to spend way too much time in the problem solving phase, which unavoidably force us to speed up to define the actions.
If in a 1:1 coaching session the recommendation is to invest a 80% of time to discuss issues and 20% to jump to action, in team retrospectives I’d adjust these percentages in the following way:
- 10% to share the agenda and make sure everyone is present in the meeting (check-in)
- 60% dedicated to raising problems and discussing them
- 30% dedicated to action refinement and feedback
In order to get to quality actions I suggest:
- Less is more: it’s better to leave the room with one good action rather than three regular ones.
- Do not hesitate using extra frameworks such as effort-value charts.
- Use the soup retrospective to help the team understand what are the areas where the team can control and the areas where the team can influence.
- Using the SMART approach (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-based) after the voting session.
- Measure alignment: making sure we all have the same understanding on what should happen.
- Have a clear DRI (direct responsible individual) over leaving it to the entire team
FOSTER DIVERSITY
A game changer for my retrospectives was to find ways to bring up the best of what’s already in the room. Based on the believe that wisdom lies within the team, it’s on our interest to make sure all ideas blossom. Everyone has great knowledge on how things should look like, however, when we simply ask “what can be improved?” certainly there are many aspects that can be easily left out.
Ways to foster diversity:
- Show a video that can serve as a metaphor during check-in phase.
- Draw the latest iteration.
- Ask open questions related to the vision: what is the best team you’ve ever worked with? what was present there?
- Run a previous hopes&concerns session.
You can think of it as giving a lantern to the team and ask them to look left, right or in any specific directions before jumping into a broader question.
ENSURE PRESENCE AND CONNECTION
The hybrid format brought up an underlying problem in many meetings and is that easily we lack the team members engagement at some point during the process. As facilitators it’s on our best interest to make sure to reach high levels of participation so that quality discussions happen.
Since it’s very likely that our colleagues have concerns or out of scope thoughts distracting them, it’s a very good idea to do something to help them be present. Here are some possibilities:
- Run the emotion & feeling wheel from David Hodder (https://feelingswheel.com/).
- “Pass the ball” and just share something quick related to the latest iteration, for instance, a rating from 0 to 10, also metaphors can work wonders here.
- Do not hesitate using the ‘liberating structures’ (an example here). For instance, it can be a good idea to run a “hopes&concerns” 5 minutes chat with just one of the team members and then bring scale up the group until you reach all attendants. In this way, people will feel aligned an connected.
Summary
Retrospectives are unpredictable in many ways, however, I strongly believe that:
- Ensuring presence and connection
- Creating diversity.
- Focus in reaching quality actions.
Will work wonders to bring your retrospectives to the next level.
Xavier Figueras 