RETROSPECTIVE IDEAS
Adding another dimension to the traditional scrum retrospective format
‘What went well?’ and ‘what could we do better?’. Two questions that cause sleepless nights for scrum masters all around the world. It’s a paradox for coaches and scrum masters, in that these two questions are the foundation of retrospectives at the end of every sprint. However, asking them repeatedly can cause ‘retrospective fatigue’.
Scrum Masters need to be aware that it can sometimes be difficult for those in development teams to see the system as it really is. Anyone who has ever worked in a busy environment will know this implicitly.
“What do we need to do better?? How long have you got!!?!”
Scrum masters need tactics to help teams see ways to improve their system without expending too much effort. The day job is busy enough! This post is about a retrospective format can potentially help with that.
According to the Scrum Guide, the purpose of the Sprint Retrospective is to:
- Inspect how the last Sprint went with regards to people, relationships, process, and tools;
- Identify and order the major items that went well and potential improvements; and,
- Create a plan for implementing improvements to the way the Scrum Team does its work.
Phew! Scrum masters, we’ve got some work to do! Happily, there is wiggle room for scrum masters to facilitate the retrospective, in any way that achieves these objectives.
I believe scrum masters should always be thinking about styles or formats of retrospectives that will best fit the mood of the sprint, and therefore, to fit the mood of the team, depending on how they are at the end of that iteration. Sometimes, when a team has had a tough sprint, a little help with seeing the wood from the trees can be useful. We all struggle to focus sometimes.
Zach Bonaker’s article about Derek Wade’s retrospective format helped me tailor a retrospective for a team at the end of a busy sprint recently, and this post is about how you could use it.
This format, like all good ideas, is deceptively simple, and hinges on adding an extra dimension to the tried and true 2-question retrospective format.
This format reminded me of Jeff Patton’s idea, and how User Story Mapping adds an extra dimension to the product backlog for powerful results.
Here is how the WADE format works:
1. (5 mins) Silent Writing: Events of the last sprint
No judgement of good or bad here, just tell me what happened from your perspective. What do you remember from the last Sprint? Did we achieve the Sprint Goal? Did we get interrupted? How was our Release process this iteration?
One post-it per idea, and the post-its can go on the whiteboard in no particular order.
2. (5 mins) Team Collaborates: Went well or didn’t go well?
This part will be familiar, but with a twist. First the scrum master / facilitator draws a vertical axis on the whiteboard with ‘went well’ at the bottom of the axis, and ‘did not go well’ at the top. Hmm.
Next, the team have to stand up (whaat?) and move the post-its along the axis. There are levels of ‘well’ and ‘not well’. They need to work together to agree where each event is on the continuum. For this task, the team should work with minimal interference from the facilitator.
3. (5–10 mins) New Axis! Control…
Once the room goes quiet, the team might gravitate back towards their seats. This is the moment for the facilitator to introduce, at the mid point of the ‘wellness’ axis, the second, horizontal axis on the board….
This second axis represents control. On the left side, we have items under our control. On the right, items outside the team’s control.
Next, ask the team to move the items along the horizontal axis. Items that are under the team’s control are on the left. Items that are outside of the team’s control are on the right.
4. (10 mins) Categorise and review
Now for the really fun part. You can describe the four ‘quadrants’ on the board according to the image below. Bottom-left are under our control and going well. Great! Let’s keep doing those! Bottom-right are outside of our control, but also going well… wow, maybe we should thank somebody!
However, the top-left section describes items under our control that haven’t gone well. Couldn’t we think about fixing those?
Also, the items on the top-right describe items outside of our control that didn’t go well for us. Man, we might want to think about how to escalate those…
5. (5 mins) Dot-vote the ‘fix’ issues.
Two votes per person. Vote on the 2 issues that you most want to fix. The principle here is that people tend to vote on their own ideas, so they might share the love a little with 2 votes!
6. (15–20 mins) What are we going to do next?
This is where we start talking about tangible actions. Outcomes. What are we going to do next? Who is going to do that? Will we add a backlog item to the next sprint to cover that? This is where the facilitator really needs to listen and guide the discussion.
We may or may not want to escalate certain issues, and care is needed here. However, if the meeting has been proceeding well to this point, the discussion should flow towards the ‘fix’ quadrant on the board.
One tangible action, added to the backlog for the next sprint, should be an acceptable outcome, but your discussion may lead to more… the facilitator needs to capture these!
7. (1 min) In closing, self-assess the meeting
Please, facilitators, do this at the end of your meetings! Ask the participants if they thought it was worthy of their valuable time. A show of hands please, one finger for terrible, five for brilliant and three for ‘meh’? When you see people’s hands in the room, you’ll know if the meeting was on the right track.
To recap, this retrospective format helps achieve the objectives of a retro, as per the scrum guide. It guides the team in inspecting what happened in the previous sprint, identifying and ordering those events, and then creating a plan for improvement in the next sprint. Awesome.
In addition, from the facilitator’s perspective, it is straight-forward to deliver, and keeps the room focused and engaged. Also, thankfully, it doesn’t subject your weary team to more PowerPoint! Dear lord please! No more PowerPoint!
