Retromat: Agile Post Mortem: 81-142-118-63-144

◄

Outcome Expectations (#81)

Everyone states what they want out of the retrospective
Source: Inspired by Jim & Michele McCarthy

Everyone in the team states their goal for the retrospective, i.e. what they want out of the meeting. Examples of what participants might say:

I'm happy if we get 1 good action item
I want to talk about our argument about unit tests and agree on how we'll do it in the future
I'll consider this retro a success, if we come up with a plan to tidy up $obscureModule

[You can check if these goals were met if you close with activity #14.]

[The Meet - Core Protocol, which inspired this activity, also describes 'Alignment Checks': Whenever someone thinks the retrospective is not meeting people's needs they can ask for an Alignment Check. Then everyone says a number from 0 to 10 which reflects how much they are getting what they want. The person with the lowest number takes over to get nearer to what they want.]

►

◄

Gather data

Watermelon (#142)

How is your project really doing?
Source: Sabina Lammert

A disconnect between the actual state of a project and a too positive external view on it, can be dangerous. The longer the disconnect lasts and the wider the gap, the harder it becomes to address: Let’s look for gaps.

In this activity you compare internal and external view on progress and project state. Prepare a flipchart with a large watermelon cut through, red with seeds on the inside, yellow and green rings on the outside. Write “How does our project look internally?” inside the melon and “How does it appear on the outside?” outside of the green ring.

Prepare a second flip chart with some seeds above and caption them “Which bothersome seeds would we like to get rid of?”. Then draw a seedling captioned “What potential can we spot?” lower on the flipchart.

During the retro present the first flipchart and ask the questions. Let participants write their take on sticky notes – 1 comment per note. Then go around with each person reading out their note and posting in the appropriate spot. Have a short discussion on your observations.

Repeat this with the second flipchart and set of questions. In this round, allow more time for more in-depth discussion. If necessary, provide structure with Lean Coffee (#51).

►

◄

Generate insights

Snow Mountain (#118)

Address problematic burndowns and scope creep
Source: Olivier Fortier

This activity is helpful when a team is constantly dealing with additional requests and scope creep. Use the burndown chart of problematic sprints to draw snowy mountains with the same outline. Add a few trees here and there. Print drawings of kids in various sledging situations such as kid sledging down fast, kid sledging and being scared, kid with a sledge looking bored, etc. (You can use Google image search with 'kid sledging drawing').

In teams of 2 or 3, ask the team members to identify which kid's reaction goes with which part of the mountain.
Example: If the mountain is flat, the kid might be bored. If you're facing a wall, the kid might be scared.

You can then discuss the team's reaction facing their own burndowns.

►

◄

Decide what to do

Low Hanging Fruit (#63)

Visualize promise and ease of possible courses of actions to help pick
Source: Tobias Baldauf

Reveal a previously drawn tree. Hand out round index cards and instruct participants to write down the actions they would like to take - one per card. When everyone's finished, collect the cards, shuffle and read them out one by one. Place each 'fruit' according to the participants' assessment:

Is it easy to do? Place it lower. Hard? More to the top.
Does it seem very beneficial? Place it more to the left. Value is dubious at best? To the right.

The straightforward choice is to pick the bottom left fruit as action items. If this is not consensus, you can either have a short discussion to agree on some actions or dot vote.

►

◄

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.

►

Outcome Expectations (#81)

Watermelon (#142)

Snow Mountain (#118)

Low Hanging Fruit (#63)

Elevenie (#144)

(#)

Created by Corinna Baldauf

Co-developed by Timon Fiddike