7 steps to make your retrospectives safer
Are our retrospectives effective? Does the team properly address the most important issues in order to improve work, relationships, processes, or tools?
I regularly ask myself these questions and I would like to talk about a situation that needs to be acted upon: when a feeling of insecurity in the team blocks the collaborators.
According to the Scrum Guide, the purpose of Sprint’s retrospective is:
- inspect how the last Sprint went in terms of people, relationships, processes and tools;
- identify and direct main elements that have worked well and potential improvements;
- and create a plan to implement improvements on the way the Scrum team works.
I realized that the most important and troublesome issues are not always addressed during the retrospective. And sometimes, when talking individually to each participants, I realized that some of them don’t feel secure enough to engage in honest dialog. Most of the time, the required psychological security level to deal with sensitive issues is not met.
What I suggest in this article is to describe the process and activities I use when I perceive a feeling of insecurity within a group. I proceed with the following steps:
- Read the prime directive
- Measure safety level
- Increase safety level
- Continue or stop
- Run the retrospective
- Confidence and feedback
- Action tracking
STEP 1: Read the prime directive
The purpose of the Prime Directive is to assure that a retrospective has the right culture to make it a positive and result oriented event. It makes a retrospective become an effective team gathering to learn and find solutions to improve the way of working.
“Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.”
STEP 2: Measure safety level
This is the measurement step. It allows you to know anonymously whether people are confident enough or not. To measure the safety level, I use the “Safety Check” tool.
This activity requires:
- identical post-it and pen for each participants so that one cannot know who wrote on which post-it.
- an opaque bag in which people can drag their post-it.
- a board to record results
I monitor the exercise as described in the safety check article below: http://www.funretrospectives.com/safety-check/
If the safety check score is less than or equal to 3 for one person, then I try to increase the safety level (step 3).
If the Safety check score is above 3 for everyone, then I start the retrospective (I go straight to step 5).
STEP 3: Increase safety level
If the score of one participant equals 3 or less, I try to improve the participants’ safety.
At this point, we do not know who is in a state of insecurity, and we will never know. It is very important not trying to know.
The activity I use to increase the level of safety by remaining anonymous is close to “Creating Safety” described in this article: http://www.funretrospectives.com/creating-safety/
As the first step, I ask people to think about every reasons that could lower someone’s level of safety. Thus, I suggest that they put themselves in the shoes of a person who could have put the lowest mark and write on the post-it the reason that would have led them to put that note. I ask every participants to write down at least one reason.
Then I ask each person to repeat the following sentence and complete it with the reason they have written on the post-it (one reason per sentence):
“If I had put the X note, it would have been because Y”
Replacing X with the lowest security check note and Y with the reason they have noted.
We display and group ideas on a visible medium for everyone.
Then I ask participants to think about what we can do to address the identified issues and try to reassure them. I ask each participant to find at least one idea for each issue. Then, for each issue, we take time to discuss and implement a rule or action that will allow us to improve safety.
Once we have reviewed every cases and identified actions or rules for each of them, we re-do a Safety Check (Step 2).
STEP 4: Continue or stop
This step is crucial. At this point, I decide whether the retrospective we are going to run will be effective or not.
If the second safety check score is still less than or equal to 3, then it means that the level of safety is still not sufficient to deal with important problems. In this case, there is no other choice but to stop the retrospective there. This would be a waste of time for everyone and the actions taken would not improve the identified problems.
However, as a scrum master, I take every necessary actions to secure the group as soon as possible. If I can’t do it, it means that the group will not move towards more efficiently. And the implementation of AGILE approaches will be seen at best as unnecessary and at worst as a failure by the company.
If the Safety check score is greater than 3, then we can start the retrospective.
STEP 5: Run the retrospective
Now we can start the retrospective either with the usual format, or with a format adapted to the needs, the current problems (if they are clear and shared by all), or to vary the pleasures. I often visit the website retromat for material or inspiration.
For example, when the feeling of safety is good but not at its best, I use a retrospective format based on Bono Hats (Edward de Bono not the singer).
STEP 6: Confidence and feedback
At the end of the retrospective, I always ask people to evaluate the activity. For example, with a ROTI. It gives me important feedbacks.
Another useful measure is the vote of confidence. For example, I usually ask the following question:
“Do you sincerely believe that the proposed actions will improve our collaboration and effectiveness?” (When the level of safety is not good, we do this anonymously by re-using the techniques of Safety Check)
People can answer: “Yes”, “Maybe” or“No” (or Y/MB/N for anonymous version):
When there is a majority of “Yes”, I consider that the objective of trust and safety has been achieved.
If not, I try to analyze why and discuss with every players individually to get more feedbacks.
The feedback is very important because it allows me to modify, adapt, change practices and share.
STEP 7: Action tracking
Eventually, we follow-up the actions to see whether or not the proposed activities have actually created an improvement.
The analysis and follow-up of actions are also extremely important feedback that allow me to change the approach and practices.
In conclusion, I really encourage you to try these activities when the safety level is low. In several situations, these activities have significantly improved the quality and effectiveness of the actions taken in retrospective. By creating safety, the improvements are more visible, and as a result, the mindset is evolving quickly.
See you soon…
