How to run a retro
Retrospective means to ‘look back’ and reflect on what has been done in the past.
What are retros?
A retrospective or ‘retro’ is a meeting held regularly with your team to discuss what happened over a period or during a stage of a project for review and improvement.
We ask 3 basic questions in retros:
· What went well?
· What didn’t work?
· What changes will we make?
How do you run a retro?
A retro has a facilitator to keep the team on track but the discussions are team-led. The answers and discussions should be centred around the 3 questions, and be honest and open with the aim of improving processes.
Making retros fun
Retros can be run in lots of different ways. You may want to start with a basic meeting template to gather information but, as the team gets used to the format, it can be fun to try new ideas.
You can use different styles for different aims. For example, I recently held a retro using a ‘one-word’ format. Each team member was asked to write on a post-it one word that they felt summed up the last period of work. Everyone else in the team then had to guess what the person meant by that word. After everyone had guessed, the person who wrote the word revealed what they meant. Then the next word was spoken and the process was repeated until all the words had been shared. The aim was for each team member to put themselves in their colleagues’ shoes, to give everyone a chance to speak and encourage discussion.
A simple internet search can reveal lots of other ways to run retros. Here are a couple of examples:
http://www.funretrospectives.com/
https://tastycupcakes.org/tag/retrospective/
What worked and what didn’t:
Having run a few retros, here are my tips.
Things that worked:
· Having a time-keeper to keep everyone on track as discussions can get lively.
· Creating an open, honest space where everyone can talk about their views.
· Writing down the actions you agree on.
· Bringing in cakes or sweets to energise the team.
Things to avoid:
· Having a retro that covers too much.
· Talking about issues that don’t relate to what your retro is about.
· Blaming people.
In summary, retros are regular meetings where everyone in a team has a chance to talk about what they liked, didn’t like or need to change in a process. Running retros in the Content Core team has helped me to build my confidence, generate trust and encourage team morale.
