{"id":1142,"date":"2025-03-04T12:50:31","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T11:50:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/?p=1142"},"modified":"2026-02-19T14:24:05","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T13:24:05","slug":"4-my-inner-loop-or-phases-are-not-always-linear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/4-my-inner-loop-or-phases-are-not-always-linear\/","title":{"rendered":"4. My Inner Loop, or: Phases are not always linear"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[This post is part of Corinna’s Guide to Facilitating Retrospectives<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hi, hello, welcome!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far we\u2019ve looked at the 5 phases<\/a> and last week at a concrete plan to facilitate your first retro<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Surprise! This week I\u2019ll circle back and make some adjustments because I\u2019m not doing it \u201cby the book<\/a>\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You see, the phases were meant to be linear and when I talk about them I usually keep up the appearance that I use them in sequence. But that\u2019s not how I actually use them in the majority of my retrospectives \u2013 because I rarely run single-topic retros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Esther Derby and Diana Larsen wrote \u201cAgile Retrospectives<\/a>\u201c, they had single-topic retrospectives in mind. In those, someone (often you) would set a topic and that’s the focus of the entire retro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whereas, when I facilitate a retrospective, teams usually cover several topics of their own choosing. By default, I run a \u201cgathering potential topics\u201d-activity like \u201cSpeedboat<\/a>\u201d or \u201cI like, I wish<\/a>\u201d and then the team works through 2 to 4 of the gathered topics. That’s also what I recommend in the best retro for beginners<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would be strange to first talk about 3 topics in depth and afterwards come up with action items for all 3 of them in a separate activity. That’s why I use the phases with a bit of an inner loop:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We talk about 1 topic in depth and when the discussion has run its course and the team votes to switch to the next topic, we\u2019ll spend another 5 minutes on creating an action item for this topic. And only then do we start with the next topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Depending on whether you run single-topic or multi-topic retros, I thought it might be worth stating this explicitly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take a minute:
<\/strong>What type of retrospectives do you think makes the most sense in your situation?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hope this helps, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Corinna<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PS: If you'd rather read this Guide as an ebook, click here.<\/a> Or go all in and get it as part of the Retromat eBook Bundle<\/a> at a discount. A purchase also supports Retromat as a whole \ud83d\ude42<\/strong><\/h3><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This post is part of Corinna’s Guide to Facilitating Retrospectives] Hi, hello, welcome! So far we\u2019ve looked at the 5 phases and last week at a concrete plan to facilitate your first retro. Surprise! This week I\u2019ll circle back and make some adjustments because I\u2019m not doing it \u201cby the book\u201d.  You see, the phases … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “4. My Inner Loop, or: Phases are not always linear”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1142"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1335,"href":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1142\/revisions\/1335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}