Hello there,
welcome to my course about retrospectives, friend! There will be a new topic every Tuesday for the next 20 weeks:
- What is a retrospective?
- Lean Coffee, my beloved
- Best Retrospective for Beginners
- My Inner Loop, OR: Phases are not always linear
- The Ground Rules for Retrospectives
- Picking activities – How I plan a retrospective
- Other factors that influence how I plan a retrospective
- Co-located Retros – Preparing the room and materials
- Remote Retros – Adapting activities
- During the retrospective – The actual facilitation
- Why do we do retrospectives?
- How to craft good Action Items
- Following up on follow through – New Phase 2
- Why vary activities?
- What’s up with the team right now? – Tuckman (and Glasl)
- What kind of questions do you ask?
- Smoother Retrospectives with a Kick-Off
- Other Resources
- Closing Thoughts
Disclaimer: this course will be biased. I started out writing a neutral course and it did not feel right. Because, I would write down one thing and then go do something else in practice. So I scratched that first version and we’ll be doing it differently:
Imagine you have just started as my colleague. It’s your first position as a Scrum Master (or Agile Coach or …) and I’m supposed to show you how to facilitate effective retrospectives. It’ll be very personal, very “this is how I do it in this specific context, your context might be different. Another way to do it is …”.
If you were my colleague, we’d set up a weekly meeting and each time I will teach you something from my 15 years of experience. In between you’ve got time to try things out because no amount of reading will magically make you a good facilitator. You have to actually do it – put it into practice, see what works, what doesn’t and adjust accordingly.
If you’re serious about improving your skills, block half an hour in your calendar every week for the next 20 weeks. These 30 minutes gives you time to read, put everything into your context and pick something to try.
If a calendar entry won’t work for you, what else can you do to increase the odds of you engaging with this course to learn how to better support your team with retrospectives?
Next Tuesday we’ll explore what retrospectives are all about – the foundation of everything. Hope to see you there,
Corinna
PS: A BIG thank you to my test readers who made this course MUCH better:
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
Thanks Corinna