Why making time for retrospectives is so important

“I really don’t have enough time to work on my daily assignments let alone to arrange a retrospective” / “I don’t see the value in stopping my daily work for one hour to attend a retrospective” — I’d bet money you’ve heard this before… and I’d double the bet that you’ve heard it more than once. So, as Facilitators/Managers, how can we build a growth mindset where retrospectives‘ importance and value is embraced?

First, let me make a disclaimer: this is not the traditional prescription post where the upcoming chapters resolve all your concerns. It is instead an honest sharing about a collection of experiences when introducing/changing retrospectives.

Your experience probably tells a different story. But my goal is to provide #foodforthought and allow you to discover more about your own experience on this topic.

What value do retrospectives provide?

After reading many books, online articles, and gaining on-the-job experience, I’m confident that retrospectives have as much value as you, the facilitator/manager, allow them to have.

The most common value definition for retrospectives points to the following benefits:

• take a break from execution and reflect on learnings;
• acknowledge and celebrate achievements;
• humbly recognise failure as an opportunity to gain knowledge;
• develop mature teamwork through active listening.

“Value” means different things for different people; ensure a common objective is shared so that everyone understands the value that you are aiming to achieve.

Such value can be achieved if you commit to it as a facilitator/driver of retrospectives, and by doing an appropriate preparation which includes:

1. setting up the tool/room that participants are going to use;
2. anticipating challenges that can be raised during the session;
3. being mindful of the time needed for each part of the session and structuring guided discussions that address the main topics in your participant’s mind;
4. being relevant since no one wants to discuss something that bothered them 2 years ago.

Value creation as an iterative process

Ultimately, it is important to acknowledge that value creation is an iterative process. As soon as value is perceived, increased engagement and motivation towards future experiments with that intent will be noticeable. Make no mistake: it might not happen overnight, but your job, as a facilitator/manager, is to be resilient and keep striving for value creation.

But…ain’t nobody got time for that

This is the million-dollar statement we keep hearing both from participants and facilitators-to be, isn’t it?

Of course preparing a good retrospective is time-consuming. If it was as simple as delegating the task to an automation, there wouldn’t be so much material discussing the importance of putting effort into it. The return, when well done, indeed surpasses the investment of time spent.

Let’s do a quick exercise! What would be more time-consuming?

• preparing and facilitating a retrospective that allows people to take a break from operational/reactive tasks to be mindful of their collective lessons learned and improvements needed

OR

• spending the next year ignoring the elephant in the room, assuming everyone knows about what’s driving inefficiencies and lack of teamwork, and preaching individually to people that they need to improve no matter what

Remember that this is not a prescription and it does not mean you are doomed if you don’t run retrospectives. But, not running retrospectives definitely makes your life — and your everyone in your company’s — more difficult if you don’t take preventive/corrective measures.

The fact that retrospectives are time-consuming does not justify not having them.

Neither does not knowing where to start or struggling to facilitate conversations while remaining impartial constitute good reasons for not having retrospectives.

None of this will be resolved by itself; you can only fix it if you do something. Improve by shadowing a more experienced facilitator, read articles, or simply be bold and try to do it the best way you can.

In the end, as a Manager (read: a manager dealing with people as direct reports or not) you are responsible for developing action plans that will lead to success. Can one really say that their full week-agenda is always so important that nothing can be postponed to organise a retrospective?

If the answer is “yes”, I urge you to explore the Eisenhower matrix, explained exceptionally well in Stephen Covey’s book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Classify your tasks using the picture below.

Eisenhower matrix — Importance vs. Urgent

Now that we covered the benefits of conducting regular retrospectives, and the importance of making them a priority, let me share my experience in leading efficient product retrospectives.

Set clear expectations (before the retrospective and in its beginning)

Do you remember the disclaimer in the beginning of this article?

This is not the traditional prescription post where the upcoming chapters will resolve all your concerns. It is instead a honest sharing about a collection of experiences when introducing/changing retrospectives.

I presented that phrase on purpose to ensure your expectations would be set properly before taking time to read the entire article.

By knowing the expected outcome upfront it empowered you to make an informed decision: either keep exploring the topic because it interests you, or close the browser’s tab because it doesn’t bring you added value.

Time is the most precious resource we have and it should be highly valued — you don’t want participants to attend your retrospectives just to do you a favour or to pretend they care about them.

Key point: take ownership and set the stage!

1. Have a brief conversation with the participants about your observations and why you believe running a retrospective, as an experiment that can succeed or fail, can be a good investment of time (this is very important so as not to give the wrong impression that you are prescribing a solution).
2. After getting buy-in, send a calendar invitation in a timely manner (not an overnight invitation — people need time to organise their thoughts) with a clear agenda of the dynamic you intend to explore during the retrospective. The setup in bullet points + the session’s goal should be enough. Here is an example: This retrospective’s goal is to reflect about the past month’s usage of process X, sharing what went well and what can be improved, in order to define an action plan, envisioning Y).
3. Clarify what, if anything, participants need to prepare prior to the session (i.e. if the session is being held online/remotely, it is a good idea to test access to the retrospective tool to avoid issues that can be managed offline).
4. Answer all on-topic questions participants might have, and be prepared for challenging topics such as why are you scheduling such a session, why it will take this much such time to complete, why are they needed as participants. If this happens, then point number 1 was not executed well. Be kind and patient, acknowledge the questions, and provide clarity.
5. As soon as the retrospective starts, welcome everyone and clarify your role as the facilitator. Explain the actions you are going to take during and after the session to document the input discussed.

Focus on engagement (during the retrospective)

During my experience as a Project Manager/Agile Coach/other related title, I’ve both led and participated in retrospectives with different setups. Setups can be adapted to the audience needs and maturity in such kind of reflective sessions. Here’s a brief list of a few well-know setups:

• Mad + Sad + Glad
• Starfish
• SWOT
• Lean Coffee

If don’t have any idea how to set up such retrospectives, I recommend you to start by using funretro or retrium since it provides templates that will save you time.

One of my favourites is the model used in Design Thinking, the Feedback Grid (you’ll find useful information in IBM’s online training)

IBM’s Design Thinking Feedback Grid used for retrospectives

In a well-facilitated session this model is quite complete and highly productive since it covers 4 important quadrants that dynamically engage between themselves:

• Worked well — your participants will be able to drop post-its sharing what makes them happy/efficient. It is recommended that the facilitator group related post-its to easily identify patterns and give kudos to the most mentioned topic.
• Questions — here, participants can (or should) drop post-its with direct questions they would like to see answered. If your retrospective is focused on a specific topic (i.e., a new expenses submission process) ensure that either the group answers the question if they can, or that you park it in a backlog to follow-up after the session. In case the group answers a question with an idea, take note of it, and add it to the Ideas quadrant.
• Change — here comes the fun! High performing groups tend to add several post-its to this quadrant because they are eager to provoke change. Be aware of what’s a genuine change need — provides an improvement — and what’s pure criticism. Guide the conversations to clarify that retrospectives are not blaming sessions. Venting is, of course, allowed, but avoid spending too much time in circular conversations that aren’t focused on solutions. While commenting on the Change post-its, note all the ideas that participants might share and place them in the Ideas quadrant.
• Ideas — this is the space where your improvement backlog is compiled. Now, if everything is urgent, nothing is urgent. Run a two minute dot-voting, allowing your participants to elect the three ideas they would like to prioritise. Commit the top three ideas to an action plan. Ensure that each idea/action has a specific owner/responsible person, and that everyone agrees to a project or assignment update schedule.

Remember that there’s no miracle framework that resolves all problems, but you can find a multitude of great guidelines that, when applied by a skilled-communicator and impartial facilitator, will indeed produce amazing outcomes).

Your job is to conduct the session in a timely manner, allowing appropriate time for each quadrant, to raise questions when comments are not clear, and to establish a common language for the group. Additionally, as the facilitator, it is expected that you handle manual work (moving post-its/cards regardless if remote or in a room) when the group is debating so that their focus is fully devoted to the conversation. In the end, ensure that you share summary minutes with the group so that you can have a paper-trail to consult in the future, if needed.

Follow through on commitments (after the retrospective)

I’m hoping you are familiar with the expression “practice what you preach” because the proposed value of something is only confirmed when indeed proofed.

One can preach infinitely about how great retrospectives are for continuous improvement yet, if the participants don’t observe that the action points committed in the session are followed up on and put in place, their motivation to continue attending further retrospectives will be null.

Be proactive: follow-up with the owners of the ideas/actions agreed to in the retrospective. You can follow-up in a one-on-one meeting or an informal chat conversation to discuss the progress of their assignment and offer support.Here are two common scenarios:

1. An idea/action plan isn’t fully completed by the time it was proposed, ensure that progress is still shared with the entire group and emphasize that efforts to finish it will continue.
2. During the development of an idea/action plan, the owner acknowledges the plan lost value and should not be done. Ensure the topic will be discussed at the start of the upcoming retrospective for team transparency and group agreement on the decision.

Companies move fast, don’t assume a commitment made on day one will be set in stone forever.

Ask for feedback (after the retrospective)

It is easy to fall in love with a new way of doing things, but does that mean the participants enjoy retrospectives as much as a facilitator does?

By assuming the answer is “yes”, you risk being wrong and not giving others a chance to express their perceived value.

If you are working hard to start/improve an open feedback culture, then retrospectives are no exception. After running a retrospective with a group of people OR after using a different setup, ensure that:

• there’s a one minute thumbs up/down reaction at the end of the session for participants to tell you if they enjoyed it or not;
• (if applicable) there’s room in your upcoming one-on-ones to ask for their feedback on your performance as a facilitator.

It is crucial that you are receptive to feedback (good and bad) to take this step. Only with this input can you improve so that upcoming sessions are more engaging, interesting and/or productive.

Take-Aways

• Retrospectives can help you find issues/improvement needs faster when done in a regular manner.
• Retrospectives enhance trust between people by gaining their full attention and input.
• A good retrospective requires preparation time to structure the setup, think about potential issues that will be raised, and organise time in a way that everyone understands the value of each discussion without going into circles.
• Retrospectives have no value if the actions committed in there end up forgotten or not attended to.
• Good facilitation comes from practice and feedback-loops. Don’t be afraid of starting small, and keep asking for feedback to understand what to focus on for improvement.

If you are still here, thank you!

Now it’s time to learn from your own experience and feedback. :)