{"id":1229,"date":"2025-05-06T18:18:17","date_gmt":"2025-05-06T16:18:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/?p=1229"},"modified":"2025-05-07T10:36:31","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T08:36:31","slug":"13-following-up-on-action-items-new-phase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/retromat.org\/blog\/13-following-up-on-action-items-new-phase\/","title":{"rendered":"13. Following up Action Items \u2013 A New Phase"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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

Hi there!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quick recap: Retrospectives serve a purpose<\/a>. In the long run, we want to improve and that means trying out things. If all that ever happens is talking and nothing ever changes due to retros, then why do them? Teams quickly learn to resent retros if they never result in change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week we talked about how we can shape action items in a way that increases their chances of getting implemented by the team. This week, it\u2019s about how we can help in the following retrospective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Story Time!<\/strong> Let me tell you about the team with the best follow-through I\u2019ve ever had the pleasure of working with: Each retro they added all action items and rule changes to a big sheet of flipchart paper. Each item had a \u201crevisit\u201d-date attached to it \u2013 the date when the team thought they\u2019d be able to judge the effect (usually 2, 4 or 6 weeks). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the beginning of each retro we would go down the list of all open items that had reached their revisit date and inspect them. Did the team do it? Did it work as intended? If yes, rule changes were made permanent and actions crossed off. If not, the items were changed or consciously dropped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They had continuous improvement down to an art. It was a joy to facilitate their retros. They devoted a huge chunk of time to this process \u2013 20-30 minutes out of 60. That sounds like a lot (it is!) but it worked very well for them. By the time they had analyzed the list, they usually had covered a lot of the things that bugged them anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve never again seen such consistent follow-up. That\u2019s why I suggest to add a new short phase in between in between \u201cSet the Stage\u201d and \u201cGather Data\u201d (from 5 phases of a retrospective<\/a>) to replicate this success: Bring the list of last retro\u2019s agreements and find out what happened with them \u2013 for about 5 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This accomplishes several things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n