[This post is part of Corinna’s Guide to Facilitating Retrospectives]
Hiho,
Today, I’ll share what I do when I sit down to plan a retrospective. This post originally was so exceedingly long that I decided to split it. Today will focus on picking activities and the next one will be a bit of a mixed bag of “oh, you might also want to consider this”.
Anyway, the first thing I do is look up what activities I used with this team last time and the times before that. My memory is like Swiss cheese so I note down which activities I do with a team for each retro. I don’t want to repeat myself too much or too early so that people stay engaged by new activities. I currently facilitate remote retros and just keep all of the retros for one team in the same big digital board – hey, presto: automatic archive 🙂
If I run the retrospective for more than one team, I tend to reuse a plan once for each team, unless there’s something specific to tailor to a team, either their current situation or their identity. When a team’s name is meaningful, I love to riff off on it. The team name is the name of an art movement? Better believe I bring pics of significant works every time. (Completely unrelated side note: I have weird niche knowledge about Dadaism.) Pokemon? Asterix? I will reference the hell out of these to support a shared identity.
Apart from that, my retrospectives all tend to follow the same basic layout that you’ve already seen in my previous emails:
1) Set the stage
I try to vary the focus e. g. in one retro focusing on feelings, in the next one on the sprint results, next one just for fun, and so on. My check in is often independent of whatever follows after. This is not what I would recommend. If you can make the check-in relate to what follows, that would be better. (But I’m honest here and that includes pointing out things I could improve on.)
1.5) Revisit the action items from last retro
Sometimes I bring back our decisions from the last retro to check whether we implemented them and if so, how our experiments worked out. More on that later in the course.
2) Gather topics
I haven’t worked closely with a team in years, which means that I don’t experience the daily routines of the teams I facilitate retros for. If there is a major disruption, I’ll hear about it but small stuff will pass me by unnoticed. That’s why 99% of the time I will use generic topic gathering activities so that the team can set the agenda.
If a team asks me to focus on a specific topic, I ALWAYS follow that request and will tailor all the activities towards that – up to and including creating new activities.
If you are sitting with your team every day you will likely observe things that prompt you to plan retros to address specific pain points more often than me in my more detached role. For inspiration, you can check out “Plans for Retrospectives”.
3) My Inner Loop
- Discuss the top topics – always Lean Coffee
- Track decisions – always Open Items List
4) Closing
I usually ask about something the participants learned during the retrospective. Occasionally I will ask about how to improve the way I facilitate. When I start facilitating for a team, I will ask about the latter more often.
My inner loop is fixed. For all the other parts I open Retromat (yeah, I really scratched my own itch with that one) and use the arrows to step through the activities in the given phase until I find one that fits. For the “Gather topics” activity I’ll peruse both “Gather Data” and “Generate Insight” because the lines are blurry with those two.
When I’m done, I look at all the activities together. Does the plan as a whole make sense or is there an abrupt change in topic? E.g. I would not start with Amazon Review and then follow it with Movie Critic.
Above, I’m sharing the retrospectives that I actually run, not the ones I think I should be running. Because I think I should run retros that adhere to the “5 phases” ideal from “Agile Retrospectives”. Yet, my retros have no 1:1 mapping of activities to match these phases: phases 2-3-4 are usually kind of merged without each of them having a specific activity dedicated to them *shrug*
Again, this is due to the fact that in my retros the team set multiple topics. It is what it is. And it has served my teams and me quite well.
Do the activities fit timewise?
Next, I check that the plan roughly fits into the available time. How long are your team’s retros?
The shortest retros I ever ran were 30 minutes. That actually worked because it was weekly and there were only 3 people who were quite aligned already.
For the biggest chunk of my facilitator life, I was on a 1 hour schedule for a 2 week sprint. That was always tight. We routinely took 65 minutes and I routinely dropped the closing activity due to time pressure 🙁
Then I moved to a team with 90 minute retros every 2 weeks and that worked much better. At my new workplace it’s 120 minutes once per month which also feels more relaxed and we sometimes finish ahead of time. I don’t think I ever want to go back to less than 90 minutes.
Whatever timeframe you are working with, roughly estimate how long each phase will take and thus how much time you can allot to the inner loop. The Retromat book and the free Retromat Quick Ref flag activities as short, medium or long.
A major factor that determines how much time you need is team size. Most activities take more time the more people are there. I would not attempt a 60 minute retro with a team of 15. With a team of 6 though, 60 minutes are probably fine. (Some teams are more eager to discuss than others, though…)
Okay, let’s make the cut here and see you next week for more things to consider during planning.
Take a minute:
How are you currently picking activities? How do the resulting retros work?
Back in a bit, 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