Retrospective — The Most Important Hour With Your Team

Yes, I absolutely believe that the most valuable hour you’ll spend with your team is the hour of retrospective, either in the end of a sprint, product cycle, specific process as a meeting/workshop, or how you’ve worked as a team for a while. We’ve used this tool on regular basis in both Dirtybit and now in Megacool. It’s great for building culture and ownership within the team. It’s also a time to address concerns and discuss them as a team.

Retrospective method Continue, Start, Stop: What have we learned? What can be improved next time? What should we definitely not continue doing?

Here’s how we do it. Hopefully we’ll convince you to give it a try:
Give your team members each three blank post-it notes to prepare. Tell them to write down

• what the team should continue doing,
• what the team should start doing, and
• what the team should to stop doing.

Here’s a screenshot from a retrospective at Megacool after creating one of our prototypes:

We are using a modified Confluence retrospective template to digitalize and track the retrospective. During the retrospective the team will all share one topic/comment at a time until no one have any more to add within the selected category (continue, start, or stop). There are four very important comments to this process:

• Everyone needs to prepare. The best way to assure that is to give the team Post-it notes prior to the meeting and schedule 10 min for them to write down everything that comes to mind. Once everyone get the hang of the process, they will start taking notes between the different retrospectives as they discover things to address.
• By circling the room and letting one person say one comment at a time, you will avoid passive participants who’ll say: “All of my stuff is already said”. It’s important that everyone contributes because it will increase the ownership of the final decision.
• This is a green zone which means that there are no wrong answers. Add all comments to their respective categories.

Review and discuss all the comments as a team and decide on an action list. This list is to be reviewed during the next retrospective to make sure the responsible parties follows-up.

• Make sure all action points each have a responsible person that will make sure to get their tasks done within the agreed time frame. Try to delegate to all team members if possible.

When retrospective is used as tool for a broader team evaluation, we have experienced success with the following themes:

• Development (Including project management, progress and process)
• Strategy (Including management, progress and communication)
• Office space
• Skills and personal development
• Social and team feeling
• Misc

It’s important to ask your team to contribute with additional themes if they feel that something is missing/not fitting within the suggested plan.

The result of topics and comments that your team members will bring to light are most of the time surprising!

Often this “forum” will enable team members to address concerns that are not otherwise spoken out loud. Also remember to evaluate the retrospective as a process in itself: What do we need to change to make this process work for us? Can moderating, preparation, duration or participation be improved in any way?

Best of luck, and please share your thoughts, comments, or best practice going forward!