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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nYou set up the tower in the team room and play a game of Jenga (pull a brick, put it on top of the tower) drawn out over several weeks. When the tower falls over that\u2019s your cue to schedule a retrospective ASAP. You pull a brick when:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- \n
- Daily standup is over<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- A \u201cdisruption\u201d happens \u2013 A disruption is something annoying \/ hindering that the team wants to keep track of. If it happens often, the Jenga tower topples earlier and you talk about the pattern of disruptions. (What is considered a disruption should change over time as old issues get resolved and new ones arise.)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Someone feels a retrospective should happen earlier rather than later<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
There is also an emergency override<\/strong>: If something drastic happens that one of the team members think warrants a conversation right fucking now, they can topple the entire tower to make the retrospective happen ASAP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This mechanism is the brainchild of Timo Zimmermann<\/a> and it\u2019s the first time I\u2019m in love with any alternative to regular retrospectives. It has a time component, because at least one brick moves every day and then several ways to speed things up, according to the team’s needs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Timo shares that they\u2019ve used the Jenga tower for more than a year and would have continued if Covid hadn\u2019t happened. The tower\u2019s success was underlined by the fact that the table it stood on was cluttered in the beginning and then gradually cleaned up as the tower got pride of place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Other evidence: When they successfully solved a type of disruption, the team picked new ones. And the utterance \u201carg, nah, I don\u2019t wanna do a retro\u201d became a thing of the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thank you, Timo & Falk for sharing with us!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/a><\/strong><\/h3><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cWe don\u2019t need regular retrospectives. Can\u2019t we just do them, when we need them?\u201d In my mind that always translated to \u201cWe will not do retros while problems are small. We will wait until it\u2019s way too late and our problems are very big and intimidating and much more difficult to resolve.\u201d But at Agile … <\/p>\n