Retrospectives: In a Sentimental Mood
Previously (see Retrospectives: In Your Own Sweet Way), I mostly focused on the visual inventory, going over some reports, charts, and techniques. I’ve also provided an outline of the heuristic, trial-and-error approach as the essential methodological foundation for running retrospectives.
Today, I’ll look into the secret nuts and bolts of what actually makes retrospective meetings work. We’re going to embrace a bigger picture this time, as the subject of company culture — the oil that keeps businesses running — is limitless. It can hardly be reduced to a few worn-out buzzwords or cliches (as is said here, for instance).
Maturity and the culture of trust
A team has to be mature enough to hold retrospectives. One of the common pitfalls is this one: teams are eager to run retrospectives just for the sake of the act. If they do agile, presumably, they are supposed to do retrospectives. But this is not as simple as following a guideline. The need must come from within, as the team develops an intrinsic feeling of oneness and holds the power to solve the issues/problems and — even more importantly — to accept the responsibility.
So how would you know if a team is mature enough for meaningful retrospectives? If it’s not, how do you go about nurturing such a team? Do you have to bother at all?
First and foremost, it’s about the no-blame culture. Well, it’s better in the positive, not in the negative, so let’s put it this way: no-blame culture is the culture of trust. And, it’s nice to see how more and more companies are going with openness, trust and transparency as their signature values.
The culture of trust emerges from a dozen of subtle ingredients. There’s no exact recipe as to how much of each ingredient you should take and in which proportion. A culture is not exactly a cocktail, for better or for worse, but it does bear some resemblance to one, as oftentimes you’ve got to stir, or even shake it well before enjoying!
Communication: tell me who you are, and I’ll tell you who I am
In line with the cocktail-making metaphor, communication appears to be the basic ingredient of an open culture. “Lack of communication” is an umbrella term for all kinds of hidden conflicts and unresolved issues, representing an antithesis of the culture of trust.
If “lack of communication” is light-heartedly referred to as a common excuse for troublesome issues, that’s when the red lights should go flashing, better yet with the fire alarm sound. Whenever people refuse to talk, or misunderstand each other’s messages, or are unenthusiastic about bringing their point across —we’re dealing with the surface skim (still in line with the cocktail-making metaphor) which probably covers a severe turmoil of contradicting values, assumptions, and beliefs.
For a certain time, the turmoil might simmer as a dormant volcano, but the eruption can come at a bad time, just as everyone assumes that the volcano has gone asleep for good. At a retrospective meeting, for example, in the form of finger-pointing:
Finger-pointing, it seems, falls short among the other consequences of the notorious lack of communication. Tons of paper and web pages have been used to research/discuss this problem through and through, and — for now — let’s pass on adding another web page to the pool.
I’ll take just one cultural pitfall related to retrospectives and meticulously dissect it, tissue by tissue (surgical metaphors seem to fit better here than the cocktail recipes).
The pitfall: no one wants to attend retrospectives
All right, about this one. Some tipsy-tricksy symptomatic cures and surface reasons for this pitfall that I’ve come across include:
- people don’t want to spend too much time on a retrospective, that’s why they rather stay away, so let’s set a time limit of 1 hr (insert 0.5 hr, etc.), and the time limit will fix it;
- no one wants to attend because it’s soo boring, so let’s make retrospectives fun! Let’s go somewhere outside and invite some clowns so they entertain us, or let’s have gourmet chefs cook delicious food for us. Only then a retrospective will work.
- people don’t feel relaxed enough. They’re shy to speak up, they experience social awkwardness, so let’s do a group therapy session which would include a set of relaxation exercises.
How does that sound? Shallow, at least. So, I’ll run the chain of why’s to find the underlying deep reasons (see Retrospectives: In Your Own Sweet Way for another example of the why’s technique).
No one wants to attend retrospectives. Why?
They believe retrospectives are a waste of their time. Why?
They decided to take some actions at the previous retrospective, but it didn’t work out. Why?
Everyone seems to be fine with the current setup. Why?
… and so on. Most typically, the chain of why’s will uncover one and the same issue: the teammates do not believe that their retrospectives are meaningful, and merely tolerate them as an interruption. Sometimes, the retrospective practice is only followed with the goal to do things “by the book”, as the teammates are well aware of a (the) problem/-s, even without arranging for a formal retrospective, and already have some solutions in mind. In this case, a retrospective would be more of an opinion-check meeting to scan/sense the collective aura of the team, so to speak, and to see if the leader’s decision is aligned with the expectations of the team or not.
To be continued.
A note from the author: This article’s headline is inspired by a music piece performed by an amazing guitar artist, as well as by her remarkable life journey.
Related:
Retrospectives: In Your Own Sweet Way
Springs, Falls, and Estimated Deadlines
Further reading:
The Big List of Agile Practices
This story is based on an earlier article.
