Motivating Your Team with Creative Retro Meetings
Embrace the Retro, Ignite the Team 🔥
A retro meeting is a retrospective evaluation and feedback process for a team or project group. These meetings often provide an opportunity to learn from past experiences by reviewing work and goals for a specific period.
Retro meetings are an important tool to understand what went well as a team, what needs to be improved, and what action to take for future projects. These meetings often become a regular ritual and are repeated at every stage of the project process.
Retro meetings should be held in an environment that encourages the participation of team members. It is important for everyone to freely express their opinions and give constructive feedback. These meetings increase the motivation of the team, strengthen communication and provide important learning opportunities for future projects. So, how can we encourage participation in Retro meetings and provide a comfortable environment for people to express their thoughts and hold the meeting most effectively? In this article, we will try to answer this question while talking about the methods I have tried in my retrospective meeting management. Let’s get started!
Making Retro Engaging and Fun through Personalized Narratives
When I started to hold the first retro meeting, the retro culture was just beginning to form, and my first task was to tell people the purpose of the meeting, why we held it, and the benefits for us. After this introduction, which I made by explaining at first, I realized that I had to do this more effectively with the new people who joined the team.
Considering the interests of the people on the team, I explained this with a slide, which is the game design of the Avengers team. In this way, it would be well established in people’s minds and they would be able to understand the new team members by looking at this document. Not only did this presentation serve as an initiation into the world of retro meetings, but it also facilitated an immediate sense of connection and resonance among team members.
Guiding the Team through a Tale-like Retro Adventure
In the second step of my journey in enhancing retro, I focused on delivering an engaging narrative-style presentation to capture people’s interest and increase participation. While I was still using the traditional drop, keep, add, and improve table to facilitate the retro meetings, I noticed that the level of engagement was not as high as I had hoped. To draw people’s attention and boost participation, I decided to present retro as if it were unfolding within a captivating story.
To achieve this, I chose the universally appealing theme of Harry Potter, aligning with each individual’s interests. Before the meeting, I created a poll in the online platform to determine which Hogwarts houses everyone wanted to be sorted into, creating excitement even before the session began. During the meeting, I assigned everyone to their respective Hogwarts houses, adding an element of fun and anticipation. Supported by animated visuals in my presentation, the unveiling of names and their respective houses generated a palpable thrill. I then asked if they were in their expected houses, which led to a lively and enjoyable introduction to the retro session.
Gamifying Retro for Enhanced Continuous Improvement
Game On! The Harry Potter-inspired storytelling approach I implemented during our previous retrospective meeting received an overwhelmingly positive response. When I assigned everyone to teams, I noticed a spark of excitement and curiosity, as if they were expecting a competition or a chance to win. Given that we often engage in games like Codenames and Gartic.io during our gatherings, I thought, “Why not treat retrospective as a game itself?” This realization led me to create an even more enjoyable atmosphere for sharing our insights and experiences.
For this, I chose Jumanji, a nostalgic board game that can appeal to everyone. We divided the team into 4 different teams. And by drawing lots, we determined the team that will start the first game. The team to start first made its first advance by rolling the dice in the game. There are cards with challenges inside along with empty boxes in the game. If it comes across an empty box, it will comment on an item in the retro table or comment on the item added by the previous team. Likewise, this progression rule applies to challenges as well. As for the challenges, I added interesting riddles to find the people in the team, such as ice breakers, both focused on adding substance to the retro board and in order for people to blend in better. Thus, retro meetings have turned into an environment where people can relax and at the same time examine our project development process more efficiently.
In conclusion, by embracing the retro approach and infusing it with engaging elements like personalized narratives and gamification, we have transformed our retro meetings into lively and effective sessions. Through the journey of exploring different themes like the Avengers and Harry Potter, we have sparked enthusiasm, fostered team connection, and enhanced participation. Gamifying the process with games like Jumanji has not only made the meetings more enjoyable but has also allowed us to delve deeper into our project development process. As I reflect on the impact these strategies have had since taking over the retro meetings, I am excited to continue implementing beneficial approaches in the future. Stay tuned for more articles, and let’s keep sharing our experiences and insights. Until next time!
