[This post is part of Corinna’s Guide to Facilitating Retrospectives]
Hello again!
Short recap of last week’s email: Retrospectives are only meaningful if they result in change, either by a better understanding of each other or experiments.
Experiments are either action items = concrete todos or rule changes = how the team handles their interactions, routines, rituals or events. Be warned, I’m sloppy and use the term “action item” to mean both types – yes, also in this email – and my recommendations apply to both types.
For me, a good action item is something that has a high chance of actually being implemented by the team. The team don’t get brownie points for coming up with ten action items. They get points for those two actions that they actually carry out and observe the results of.
Okay, let’s pretend that we are in a retrospective and the team is suggesting things to try out. What will increase the chances of follow-through for an action item? So glad, you’re asking! Strap in for my longform take:
9 properties of action items that make follow-through more likely
Small
Aim for small experiments. Go for the smallest change that could possibly make a difference. Small changes are easier to agree on. They have a higher chance of actually being implemented, because they are not such a big effort. If an experiment works: Great! If it doesn’t you haven’t invested much and can try something else. Rinse and repeat for continuous improvement.
Don’t underestimate the power of baby steps! Small changes quickly add up to big improvements. It’s like compound interest. Additionally, people experience that change is possible and gain momentum. Change is like a muscle: It gets easier with practice. Eventually bigger changes also become possible.
Concrete
Let’s assume, the team has a high-level goal such as “We want fewer failed stories”. There are many different ways to get closer to this goal. The team decides to go with limiting work in progress, e. g. “Work on fewer stories in parallel.” I would not be happy with this. How few is “fewer”?
How about: “We’ll work on at most 2 stories simultaneously”. Better. It’s easy to check whether or not the team is sticking to this.
In Control of the Team
Now it’s time to check if the goal and their strategy to reach the goal is within their control. In any given system there are
- parts that the team Controls
- parts that the team can Influence and
- parts that they can’t change. But they can Adapt to deal with them better
Make sure that the goal and strategy reflect where the team stands regarding “CIA”. It’s okay to pick a goal that they can only influence as long as their plan is about who and how to influence.
When you’re clear on that, ask them for the first step.
First Step
Few quotes have stuck with me as much as this one by James Clear (of “Atomic Habits” fame):
“Most people think they lack motivation when they really lack clarity.”
I know it’s spot on for me personally: if it’s too big or vague, I won’t even start. But if the first step is this one very specific thing? Well, this bit I can do. And then the next. And the next.
People often lose momentum, when they don’t know exactly how to start and it’s even truer for teams: If it’s unclear what the first step is, if it’s unclear what was actually meant by this two-word-action-item… momentum will falter before it was even really gained in the first place.
For a to-do, make the first step as concrete as possible, e.g. if it’s about setting up a meeting clarify: Who is invited? How long will it be? When’s a good time for it? What’s the goal of the meeting?
For a rule change, spell out a concrete change in behavior – including what will trigger the behavior such as “During our daily standup, we’ll make sure that we work at most on 2 stories at the same time”.
Owner aka Responsible Person
Who is going to take care of this AI? Either by doing it themselves, by finding other people to implement it, or by reminding people. E.g.: “Timm will add the WIP-check to our standup-checklist”.
If there are no volunteers for an action item, then it might not important enough to the team (right now). Consider discarding it. Being explicit about not having the capacity or desire to do something is important information. Know thy (team)self.
If nobody volunteers, “What would have to change so that you would volunteer?” is an interesting follow-up question.
Review date
For todos, this is straightforward: until when will it be done?
Rule changes often need a longer period of time to see them in action, before you can review them. So how long will the team try a new rule? When the trial period is up, the team reviews the rule to see if it solved their problem.
Success criteria
How will the team know that they did the action item? And how will they know if they solved the problem or at least improved the situation? What are their success criteria? “Gut feeling” is an okay metric in my book as long as the team is explicit about it.
So far, all the points were for a single action item. The next one applies to the set of action items that come out of a retro:
One of Few
I once heard someone boast that they got 17 actions out of their last retro. They thought that that was a good thing. To me, it’s not. There’s a proverb “Those who hunt two rabbits will catch neither”. If you have too many goals you will reach fewer of them than if you had a small number to begin with and are able to focus. Out of a 60-90 minute retrospective we will typically get 2-3 action items. Anything more than 5 would make me very skeptical.
Last but not least:
Triggers and reminders
Sometimes teams think that they will just magically remember to do the action, without any specific reminders or system in place. When invariably in the next retro they find out that no, they didn’t (imagine my surprised pikachu face here) they sometimes still don’t wanna set up a mechanism. I’m baffled by this. Why do they think it will be different this time around?
William Larsen said something along the lines of “An action item is good if nobody has to become a better human to implement it”, meaning that nobody has to suddenly have perfect memory, become way more diligent or anything like that for the action to get done.
That’s why I insist on setting up triggers and reminders that will make it more likely for the behavior to happen. Find a way to keep the experiments on everyone’s minds. Some ideas for visual reminders:
- Big AIs can become stories in the Sprint backlog
- Visualize 1-time-todos on the team board
- Have a running list of ongoing experiments
- Maintain a “Working Agreement” to list all current team rules
- Post checklists in the places you’re going to need them – e.g. the checklist for the daily standup goes on the task board
Triggers:
- Calendar events
- Slack reminders
- Add to checklists already in use
- Git commit hooks
- …
Add action items to boards and (digital) documents that the team already use on a daily basis.
Okay, to recap: Small, concrete, team has control over it, clear first step, responsible person, follow-up date, success criteria; there are only a few AIs, triggers & reminders
Let’s revisit some of the example actions and rules changes from last post:
- Tidy up test-suite ->
Jordan (PO) and Mel (Dev) will write a story for our next sprint - Get input from the Ops team ->
Kim will invite the devops team to our refinement meeting – by the end of today - Everybody will answer these 3 questions in the daily standup ->
Everybody will answer these 3 questions in the daily standup – Taylor will post them to the board - We will groom upcoming stories every Wed 3p ->
We will groom upcoming stories every Wed 3pm – Pete will send a calendar invite tomorrow - We will prepare the product demo the day before the review ->
We will prepare the product demo the day before the review – Priya will set up a reminder in Slack
Do you see the difference between the before and after?
Take a minute:
Look at your recent AIs, how concrete and actionable are they?
What is the average follow-through on action items in your teams? Are you happy with that?
Full disclosure: I have no idea what the average follow-up on action items is. For my teams it’s between 60-80%. Dropped action items often “belong” to problems that sorted themselves out in other ways. So I’m not aiming for 100% follow-through. I think 80% would be cool. But even at 60-80% the teams are happy and improving. So there’s that.
Good-bye and see you soon,
Corinna
PS: Did you know there's a Retromat eBook Bundle? Ready-made retrospective plans for beginners and all activities from Retromat for experienced facilitators. Check out the Retromat books