Revitalize Sprint Retrospectives with the Starfish Diagram
Create Social Dynamics In Your Team
Retrospective Should Be Flexible
I’d written a post regarding how to hold a simple sprint retrospective, and many readers felt it suitable for their kick-off. Well, as time went by, I started finding a phenomenon that our members shared less than before, because we had been sticking to the original form for a long while. And we need some change to refresh our experience.
In order to make some changes, I started investigating if there are any other retrospective techniques that could motivate members to speak in public, and deepen the collaboration between us. Well, all that happened before I was laid off. Fortunately, I at least implemented it once to gain the last experience of optimizing the retrospective session.
In my opinion, there are primary 3 reasons I think it desirable for the trial. First of all, it refreshes the empirical process of sprint retrospectives. Indeed, the scrum guide just tells you fundamental principles for sprint retrospective but nothing about practices, therefore we need to brainstorm how to do it without violating its spirits.
And then, it strengthens the collaboration links among members in different forms. As you have been used to a certain behavior, it gets hard to think from different perspectives, which is important to provoke various ideas. So trying to change the form is critical to stimulate our brains.
Further more, it helps the team consider our working model in different angles, and propose improvement plans to it. Anyone should be a change agent in an organization and I take effort to enable emergent leadership across the organization. Any suggestions from within sprint retrospectives might be valuable to continuous improvement.
Aha Moment
Therefore, I’d tried to investigate if there were any other retrospective practices suitable for our team. There are many templates online but I preferred an easy-to-use one that could effectively enable conversations as well as brainstorming in the team. Some were suitable for sales team, some needed complicated activities. I couldn’t find a suitable practice until I met Starfish diagram.
In the scrum guide, we discusses what went well during the sprint, what problems it encountered, and how those problems were (or were not) solved. And we focus on tools, processes, interactions, and individuals, so I made up a matrix that seems simple and intuitive for anyone to kick off, as below.
Although it’s easy to running through the board, members need to think a lot according to the frames I set. As a result, they got more and more bored with the board. I need to take some changes!
Steps Taken in Starfish Diagram
Therefore, in my last sprint retrospective, I broke the original form of the retro-session and divided the white board into 5 sections.
- More of …
write down actions we’d like to expand in the near future and they take effect, such as storytelling, unit testings, etc. - Less of …
write down actions we’d like to eliminate in the near future because they waste more time but takes less effect. - Keep Doing …
write down actions we’d like to keep because they take effect and should be continued for later sprints. - Stop Doing …
stop something that doesn’t generate positive outcomes for the team. - Start Doing …
try something new that might solve current problems.
Everyone seemed excited about the form because they didn’t know I would ask them to do something different from what they did in retro-sessions. And then I followed the steps below to enable effective conversations.
- Ideate
In this part, members write down their own ideas according to the 5 sections. Different from my original retrospective form, it got more free for members to think in a broader manner; not limited by the frames I set. It is expected that there would be more interesting ideas popping up from within the ideation process. - Feedback
And then, I would ask them to speak in public regarding what they write down and other members could give feedbacks to speakers’ ideas. The style is different from what I usually did because I’d been used to standing in front of the board running through all the sticky notes. But this time I acquired them to describe what they wrote, and got instant feedback from audiences. The part enabled effective conversation between members, boosted transparency, and strengthen the collaboration from the back-and-forth feedback process. - Vote
After finishing the feedback process, everyone just voted for the topics they would like to dig more, and we would choose at least 3 items to kick off the next part. - Solution
Finally, we would work together talking about the top 3 selected topics for deeper discussion. In this part, we not only dig more reasons regarding the voted items but also brainstorm innovative solutions to improving our collaboration. For example, we had once debated the scalability of existing product, and lastly we reached a compromise by analyzing user data to make decisions.
Reflections on The First-hand Starfish Practice
After trying the first Starfish practice, I was suddenly laid off. And I kept some notes in mind for this post, because I felt it precious to share my experience with all the readers.
During feedback-to-vote stage, the members suggested to stick notes to another board for voting, and don’t limit the maximum of votes so that they could choose more interesting topics to work on.
For me, it was a fresh experience to let my members speak in front of others because I thought it important to express their own ideas and get instant feedbacks to improve transparency. I think the practice effectively enhance the transparency of the team and enable further inspection and adaptation.
Coach’s Murmur
In my opinion, I think it necessary to switch to different ways of retro-sessions at moderate times. For this, I bought a book written by Linda Rising, and Starfish is one of its best practices. I would take some time investigating whether there are more effective ways to get members aware of continuous improvement.
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