A few years ago, someone told me that they had witnessed several newly minted Scrum Masters take a random plan from Retromat and run a retrospective with it. The plan that was displayed when they opened Retromat. Or one they got hitting the “New random retro”-button. The resulting retrospectives had been confusing.
At first, I was unbelieving, that anyone would do that: Just take the five activities that were randomly combined and call it a “plan”? No way!
Then I was shocked: A random combination doth not a plan make. It wasn’t surprising that these retrospectives were trainwrecks.
Upon reflection, I realized that for a beginner it is really hard to see that a random plan will not work. In order to protect new SMs and teams from a terrible first retro experience, I wrote “Retromat is not meant for beginners” and added clarification on the Retromat homepage.
It didn’t feel like enough, because I couldn’t point new facilitators to something readily helpful and applicable. That’s why I came up with the Best Retrospective for Beginners. The name is exaggerated but the plan is solid. The people using it have gotten great feedback from their teams.
But I didn’t stop thinking about how to better support beginners. Because all the books out there contain building blocks, not a finished stable building. Makes sense, because the books (and Retromat) are by experienced facilitators for experienced facilitators. We love to mix and match activities. But how is a beginner supposed to mix and match with the same level of confidence and success?
Today, four years later, I finally improved on that single plan: I assembled 15 plans for retrospectives + 1 bonus plan so that newly minted facilitators can hit the ground running. The plans cover a variety of common situations in agile teams: Dealing with reluctant participants; helping complainy teams take responsibility; working on better stories and requirements; talking about expectations; increasing follow-through; …
Maybe you can spread the word among the budding facilitators in your life 🙂
PS: There’s also a bundle for this book + the book with all 135+ activities in Retromat.