[This post is part of Corinna’s Guide to Facilitating Retrospectives]
Hello again!
Last week, I declared my undying love for Lean Coffee. This week, I’m sharing a concrete retrospective that you can use if you’re looking for a plan to dive in and facilitate your first retro.
Before we get to that, maybe you’re wondering, why I share a specific plan with you? Can’t you just open Retromat and presto: a plan for a retrospective?
Unfortunately, that is a terrible idea. Retromat is random. It combines the activities without any regard of them fitting together and most of them don’t. That is really easy to see for experienced facilitators and almost impossible to realize for beginners. Retromat was never meant for beginners.
Now that I got the disclaimer out of the way, here is my “Given that I know nothing about you or the team’s situation here’s my best shot at a multi-purpose, straightforward to facilitate” retro plan:
A great plan for beginners
(If this is also the first retrospective for your team it’s probably a good idea to explain the purpose of a retrospective and to talk about keeping things confidential. We will cover the latter topic in two weeks.)
Set the Stage:
Positive & True
Why: Create a positive vibe and give everyone an opportunity to speak.
How: Think of a question that is tailored to get a response that is positive, true and about their own experiences, e.g.
- What have you done really well in the last iteration?
- What is something that makes you really happy?
- What nice thing did you do for someone else last iteration?
Introduce the question and give a minute or two of time to think. Then ask your neighbor the question again. After answering, your neighbor asks their neighbor on their other side the same question and so on until everyone has answered and asked.
Everyone gets to participate right away, everyone gets a little boost and we set a positive tone for the retro.
Gather Data + Generate Insight:
Learning Matrix combined with Lean Coffee
Why: Learning Matrix is a great multi-purpose method that has “appreciation for others” built-in. I use it to gather topics and then use Lean Coffee to structure and time box the conversations about these topics.
How: Show a flip chart with 4 quadrants labeled ‘:)’, ‘:(‘, ‘Idea!’, and ‘Appreciation’. Hand out sticky notes.
- Let team members silently write their ideas for all the quadrants onto sticky notes – 1 thought per note. Encourage them to come up with at least one sticky note per quadrant. This can offset a struggling team going too negative or a passive team avoiding unpleasant truths.
- Go around the team and let everyone put up their stickies on the flipchart and describe each topic in 1 or 2 sentences. Cluster stickies that are about the same topic.
- Hand out 3 dots for people to vote on the most important issues, i.e. the ones they’d like to discuss. They can distribute the dots any way they like, i.e. they can put them all on one topic or three different ones and everything in between.
- Order the stickies according to votes.
- Say how much time in total you set aside for this phase and then explain the rules:
“We’ve now got X minutes to talk about the top topics. We’ll start with the topic of highest interest. I’ll set a timer for 10 minutes. When the timer beeps, everyone gives a quick thumbs up or down. Majority of thumbs up: The topic gets another 5 minutes. Majority of thumbs down: Start the next topic with 10 minutes on the clock.” - Stop when the overall allotted time is over.
Decide What to Do:
Worked Well, Do Differently
Why: Keep track of suggested action items
How: In preparation for the retrospective head 2 flip charts with ‘Worked well’ and ‘Do differently next time’ respectively. Write down suggestions for actions that people mention during Lean Coffee. State clearly that these are only suggestions for now. The team will vote on these later.
When all Lean Coffee time is talked up, ask if there are any more suggestions for actions. If so, let them write in silence for a few minutes – 1 idea per sticky note. Let everyone read out their notes and post them to the appropriate category. Lead a short discussion on what the top 20% beneficial ideas are. Hand out 3 dots for people to vote on which action items to try to distribute any way they like. (If you don’t have sticky you can also let people draw dots or lines with a marker.) The top 2 or 3 voted become your action items. Who is going to do them until when?
Closing:
AHA
Why: Share lessons learned and demonstrate the usefulness of retrospectives
How: Throw a soft ball around the team to uncover learning experiences. Give out 1 question at the beginning that people answer when they catch the ball, such as:
- One thing I learned in this retrospective
- One thing that surprised me during the retro
- One thing that makes me hopeful after this retro
[It’s rare but depending on the question it might uncover events that are bugging people. If any alarm bells go off, clarify immediately and ask if you can follow up outside of the retro if need be.]
In many situations the above plan will result in a nice, effective retrospective for you and your team. If you use Miro as a digital whiteboard, I’ve prepared a Miroboard here that you can copy for free.
You need 90 minutes of time for this plan. It also makes good use of 120 minutes. I can squeeze it into 65 minutes if I have to.
Take a minute:
Can this plan work for you and your team? Which bits will you adapt for your context and why?
Facilitate a few retros to gain experience and when you run out of ideas, Retromat is always there to help. But please don’t use the first random plan you get! Adapt it to your and your team’s needs. And start out with simpler activities. Do not get overly excited with something like an elaborate superhero retrospective. Give everyone – yourself and the team – time to get familiar with the basic flow, voting mechanisms and such. You want them to be able to focus on the content, the problems they are trying to solve. They can’t do that if they are trying to figure out how a complicated activity works. When in doubt, pick something simple. If it goes well, you can try something more elaborate the next time.
That’s it for now, have a great week,
Corinna
PS: If you’d like some ready-made plans to get started, I wrote “Plans for Retrospectives” for this exact purpose.
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