Retromat: Retro Meeting: 32-123-145-117-144

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Emoticon Project Gauge (#32)

Help team members express their feelings about a project and address root causes early
Source: Andrew Ciccarelli

Prepare a flipchart with faces expressing various emotions such as:

shocked / surprised
nervous / stressed
unempowered / constrained
confused
happy
mad
overwhelmed

Let each team member choose how they feel about the project. This is a fun and effective way to surface problems early. You can address them in the subsequent phases.

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Gather data

Find your Focus Principle (#123)

Discuss the 12 agile principles and pick one to work on
Source: Tobias Baier

Print the principles of the Agile Manifesto onto cards, one principle per card. If the group is large, split it and provide each smaller group with their own set of the principles.

Explain that you want to order the principles according to the following question: 'How much do we need to improve regarding this principle?'. In the end the principle that is the team's weakest spot should be on top of the list.

Start with a random principle, discuss what it means and how much need for improvement you see, then place it in the middle. Pick the next principle, discuss what it means and sort it relatively to the other principles. You can propose a position depending on the previous discussion and move from there by comparison. Repeat this until all cards are sorted.

Now consider the card on top: This is presumeably the most needed and most urgent principle you should work on. How does the team feel about it? Does everyone still agree? What are the reasons there is the biggest demand for change here? Should you compare to the second or third most important issue again? If someone would now rather choose the second position, why?

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Generate insights

Braver (#145)

What does courage look like? What would the team do if they were bolder?
Source: Johanna Amlacher

Put up four posters with the following questions:

Which person in the team do you find courageous and how does courage show itself?
When have you felt insecure and wished you were braver?
What helps you to be brave?
What bold idea would you try as a team if you were 10 times bolder?

For each question do a round of:

4 minutes of quiet time to answer the question on sticky notes
Ask people to read out and post their answers. (In a large group you can use 1-2-4-All to discuss answers in smaller groups first.)
Cluster similar answers

(We do it in several rounds to slowly warm up the participants to tackle the last question.)

After the last round, look at all the answers and facilitate a discussion. Ask participants what is standing out for them? What's unexpected? What patterns do they see? What do these patterns mean for them as a team?

Then ask the team to rate themselves on a scale of 1-10: How brave do they think they are? Followed by: What would be possible if they were one step higher on the scale?

Based on everything they’ve talked about, what would they like to try that’s somewhat bold yet safe enough?

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Decide what to do

Maximize Follow Through (#117)

Think about how the team will follow up and set yourselves up for success
Source: Chris Rimmer

Prepare a flip chart with 4 columns titled 'Action', 'Motivation', 'Ease' and 'Reminder'. Write down the list of actions the team wants to take in the first column. Read out each action and fill in the other columns by asking:

Motivation - How can we motivate ourselves to do this?
Examples: 'Jane will own this and report back at the next retrospective', or 'We'll reward ourselves with cake on Friday if we do this every day'

Ease - How can we make it easy to do?
Example: For an action 'Start involving Simon in the stand up' a possibility could be 'Move the task board next to Simon's desk'

Reminder - How will we remember to do this?
Examples: 'Richard will put a reminder in Google Calendar' or 'We'll do this after the stand up each day'

Actions do not require all of the above. But if there are no suggestions for any of the columns, ask the team if they really think they will do it.

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Close the retrospective

Elevenie (#144)

Write a short poem
Source: Stefanie Dinh

An Elevenie (German 'Elfchen') is a poem with 11 words on five lines – 1, 2, 3, 4 and 1 word per line respectively. Only do this with a team in which people enjoy working with each other. It's a wonderful activity to do with a team that is disbanding at the end of a project as a way to commerate the good times.

Hand out pens and paper and read out the instructions:
'We are going to each write a poem with 5 lines. Each line has a specific number of words. Don't worry, I'll guide you through each line, one by one. Write down 1 word that comes to mind when you think about our team (a feeling, a color, ...).
On the next line, describe this feeling with 2 words.
On the next line, add details with 3 words – What is it like? How does it smell or sound? What would you like to add?
On line 4, write down a sentence with 4 words, starting with 'I'. What do you associate with your feeling.
Take a moment to read your poem thus far. What 1 word comes to mind? This is the final word of your poem on line 5.'

Now you can go around and everybody who wants to, can read out their poem. Bring tissues, it can be quite moving.

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Emoticon Project Gauge (#32)

Find your Focus Principle (#123)

Braver (#145)

Maximize Follow Through (#117)

Elevenie (#144)

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Created by Corinna Baldauf

Co-developed by Timon Fiddike