10 steps to getting the most out of a long overdue retro
We have all been there. Back-to-back weeks of frantic delivery and not enough time to do retros. It shouldn’t happen but it does. Ironically, this experience is a sign that you need to do a retro!
The problem is that when you come to reflect on your work after weeks in the trenches everything is a bit blurry and fuzzy. Everyone is tired. Important things from weeks ago have been forgotten. How do you ensure that your team can have a productive conversation which leads to the improvements you need to make?
I would like to share a method for doing retros in situations where you have to cover a longer space of time and where memories are hazy. This method has the following benefits:
- Brings out the facts of what actually happened
- Creates a story that is easy to understand
- Makes it easier to spot causal patterns across time
- Can be used in conjunction with many other retro models
The high level idea is that you create a timeline of events during the sprint and iterate on it with the team until everyone is on the same page with regards as to what happened. The team then identifies what they liked, learned, lacked and longed for on the events in chronological order. You can substitute many other retro techniques for the 4L technique suggested above.
It will end up looking something like this:
I used this method with great results just last week and I thought I would share it with you:
1. Prepare a timeline ahead of the retro: I looked at my calendar and identified key meetings that I had over the period. I wrote them down in a shared doc alongside the dates they took place on. I added a few words to describe what happened. It looked something like this the image:
2. Add detail to the timeline with your team: As I wrote the timeline other events that were important started coming back to me and I added them in. After that, I invited the team to build on what I had with their own key events. The collaborative creation of the timeline unearthed memories that would otherwise have been forgotten. The outcome was a timeline of key events that occurred during the period.
3. Convert the timeline to Post-its and put up them up on a wall ahead of time: On this project, I used one Post-it per day as it was a small project. For more complex projects I would have used several stacked Post-its or possibly a Gantt chart to represent the timeline.
4. Underneath the timeline create four lanes for liked, learned, lacked and longed for: This is where the Post-its from the team were put up. I used different coloured Post-its for the different lanes to keep things organised. Make sure there is enough space by thinking about how many team members you have and how many Post-its they are likely to write.
5. At the start of the retro walk the team through the timeline: I made sure everyone agreed on what happened and when. We had to adjust the timeline to reflect changes the team brought up. When we were done we had a mutually agreed version of what happened at the front of our minds.
6. The team should walk up and down the timeline and jot down their thoughts: We time-boxed this and did it in silence. The team should be asking themselves “At that point in time what did I like, learn, lack and long for”. The answer to that question is what goes on the Post-it.
7. The team put their Post-its up in the relevant lane and at the appropriate point in time on the timeline: We did this quick step in silence.
8. Where the magic happens. Walk down the timeline and ask people to explain their thoughts as you go: We walked through the Post-its and I asked their owners to explain it. We encouraged discussion and there was some inevitable overlap in feedback from the team. I made sure that all the Post-its were covered and everyone had a chance to speak. It’s okay to jump up and down the timeline if the situation calls for it. The real goal of this part is to share information, clear up misunderstandings and most importantly; to create actions for the things that need to be done to make the team more effective.
9. On a different coloured Post-it write any actions that arise: Actions arose naturally from the team but I did have to prompt them a few times. Whenever the discussion spiralled I brought it back on track by asking the team “What can we do to make this better?”. As we went down the timeline older actions needed to be edited and some were superseded by newer, better ones.
10. Review actions that have arisen and assign the to people: There is little point in these exercises if nothing changes. We assign the actions together and allocated time for them to be performed in the future.
This approach does have some challenges. It can be a bit more time-consuming than other approaches. This is especially true if the team is big and there are a lot of small, bitty tasks that have been done over a period of time.
Having said that, I think it works really well when you need to remind people of what happened during a longer stretch of time.
Broadly speaking, our brains construct our reality as a series of narratives. This approach makes full use of that to bring the past back to life.
In summary, using a timeline approach helps to get everyone on the same page and tease out learnings when too much time has past since the last retro. By doing this you will help your team learn and get better in the long run.
Good luck and let me know what you think!
