{"id":1166,"date":"2025-03-25T15:28:38","date_gmt":"2025-03-25T14:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/?p=1166"},"modified":"2025-03-25T15:32:31","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T14:32:31","slug":"7-other-factors-how-i-plan-a-retrospective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/7-other-factors-how-i-plan-a-retrospective\/","title":{"rendered":"7. Other factors \u2013 How I plan a retrospective"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>[This post is part of <a href=\"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/corinnas-guide-to-facilitating-retrospectives\/\">Corinna&#8217;s Guide to Facilitating Retrospectives<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Hello again!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here\u2019s the hodgepodge of topics that I didn\u2019t want to squeeze into last week\u2019s post on <a href=\"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/6-picking-activities-how-i-plan-a-retrospective\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"1163\">how I pick activities<\/a>. It depends on your context how much of my process might apply to you but at the very least you will know <em>one<\/em> way to do it and can figure out <em>your<\/em> way from there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, <strong>other factors<\/strong> to take into consideration, when choosing activities:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Are there activities that will be accepted better than others?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>What\u2019s the attitude towards retros? Do people want to take part?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Have individual people expressed preferences?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I cater towards wishes unless I think they are harmful. There are teams who crave novelty and are eager to try \u201ccrazy\u201d stuff. There are teams that dislike \u201ccreative\u201d association games. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There was one person who was okay-ish with stuff like \u201cIf the sprint was a food, what kind of food would it be?\u201d as long as they didn\u2019t have to come up with it on the spot. So as soon as I had picked my \u201cSet the Stage\u201d-activity, I would slack the prompt to them in advance. Half an hour was enough. I got to do whatever check-in I wanted and they got to be comfortable with it. It worked for both of us. The rest of the team knew of our compromise and never wanted in on the \u201cspoiler\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How experienced are the participants with group discussions?&nbsp;<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Are they already <strong>good co-facilitators<\/strong>? Do they take turns talking? Do they start clustering similar topics on their own?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Do they know basics like dot-voting?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The less experienced the team is with retrospectives, the more time you need to plan in for explanations. Check out my free book <a href=\"https:\/\/leanpub.com\/facilitation-is-a-team-sport\">Facilitation is a Team Sport<\/a> to find out more about how to make your life easier:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/leanpub.com\/facilitation-is-a-team-sport\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1000\" height=\"1000\" src=\"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/facilitation-is-a-team-sport.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1167\" srcset=\"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/facilitation-is-a-team-sport.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/facilitation-is-a-team-sport-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/facilitation-is-a-team-sport-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/facilitation-is-a-team-sport-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/facilitation-is-a-team-sport-100x100.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 706px) 89vw, (max-width: 767px) 82vw, 740px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How\u2019s the power (im)balance?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Are there formal <strong>hierarchies<\/strong> at play? Informal ones like seniority, some job roles being taken more seriously than others?&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Ways to counteract imbalances:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>More written activities \u2013 makes people less likely to withdraw something in premature conformity\/alignment<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>More anonymous activities<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Outside of the retro: Ask more influential people to go late or last in round-based activities<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Does it make sense to run the occasional retro without the team lead (or similar)?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Work on <a href=\"https:\/\/wall-skills.com\/2020\/how-to-build-psychological-safety\/\">Psychological Safety<\/a> (we\u2019ll cover that in a later email) but ONLY if it is <em>actually<\/em> safe for everyone to speak up<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Pay attention to other things that might surface in subtle ways (sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, &#8230;). It doesn\u2019t have to be an active thing by anyone: The way we are all raised makes some people more comfortable with taking up time and space than others, and some people\u2019s voices get more amplified because of what they look like.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What about posting an agenda?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p>Some people whose work I greatly admire, post an agenda everytime. I rarely do, because my retros are on the shorter side, I work with teams long-term and everybody quickly learns the underlying structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I work with a team that is new to retrospectives, I will talk briefly about the steps we\u2019ll go through at the beginning and mention what times I\u2019ve <strong>planned the breaks<\/strong> for. Other than that, I usually only post agendas for workshops upwards of 2 hours.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because this course is a lot of \u201cI do it this way\u201d I\u2019d like to explicitly state that for many, many of my approaches I also know someone who goes about it completely differently and it also works. For them. It might not work for me because I\u2019m different or because my team is different. <strong>There are a lot of ways to be a good facilitator and there are a lot of different teams out there.<\/strong> You\u2019ve got to find an approach and style that works for you and your team. And I think you\u2019re gonna rock it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Take a minute: <strong><br><\/strong><strong>Think about your team for a bit: What kind of activities would they love to participate in?<\/strong><strong><br><\/strong><strong>And what\u2019s the internal power structure? How can you make sure that everyone gets heard?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On that note, I bid you farewell! In the next email we\u2019ll dig a bit more into preparing a co-located retrospective. See ya,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Corinna<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><h3><strong>PS: If you'd rather read this <a href=\"https:\/\/leanpub.com\/guidetoretrospectives\" target=\"_blank\">Guide as an ebook, click here.<\/a> Or go all in and get it as part of the <a href=\"https:\/\/leanpub.com\/b\/retromat-bundle-agile-retrospectives\" target=\"_blank\">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":"<p>[This post is part of Corinna&#8217;s Guide to Facilitating Retrospectives] Hello again! Here\u2019s the hodgepodge of topics that I didn\u2019t want to squeeze into last week\u2019s post on how I pick activities. It depends on your context how much of my process might apply to you but at the very least you will know one &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/7-other-factors-how-i-plan-a-retrospective\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;7. Other factors \u2013 How I plan a retrospective&#8221;<\/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\/1166"}],"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=1166"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1170,"href":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166\/revisions\/1170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}