We’ve had a couple great retrospectives lately, so I thought I would share two of the exercises that really garnered some good discussion.
I’ve posted about this in the past, but just as a refresher, this is how we do retros at Industrial:
Every second sprint we all come together to pause and reflect on the previous couple sprints (roughly once a month). During retro, we take part in a series of exercises designed to get each other talking about what went well and what could be improved upon in the next sprint. I am the facilitator so I don’t take part in the exercises, but I choose which ones we will do, keep the conversations going, keep things on track from a timing standpoint, and note any issues or action items along the way. The retro lasts about 1.5 - 2 hours and gets broken up into the following parts:
- Energizer (quick exercise to get everyone’s brains awake and feeling positive)
- Gather data (exercise to help everyone remember the past sprint and start reflecting on what happened)
- Generate insight (exercise to determine why things happened the way they did and if there are any patterns or major issues)
- Decide what to do (exercise to help chose a few of the major issues to work on and plan action around fixing them)
- Close (quick closing exercise to check in on the temperature of everyone’s feelings post-retro)
I have a few great resources that I go to for ideas on exercises and often adapt them to suit our team. Sometimes my 11-year-old suggests some great ideas as well, like the scavenger hunt we played as an energizer the other day. Here are 2 recent “gathering data” exercises that were very successful:
Exercise #1 - Three Little Pigs
Purpose: Discover where your team's vulnerabilities are and decide how to improve them.
Source: http://www.funretrospectives.com/three-little-pigs/
1 - First I had someone draw a visual of the 3 houses on the whiteboard (straw, sticks and bricks)
2 - Then I explained to the team what each of the 3 houses represents at Industrial:
- House of straw – what do we do that barely holds together, and could topple over at any minute? (e.g. “our deployment script is very manual and prone to error – we could break production very easily”)
- House of sticks – what do we do that is pretty solid, but could be improved? (e.g. “our use of git commits to log work”)
- House of bricks – what do we do that is rock solid? (e.g. “our automated deployment and cutover has never failed.”)
3 - I then asked the team to individually spend about 10 minutes coming up with things to write in each category and then share their notes on post-its and place them on the board in one of the three columns.
4 - As each person went up to the board and read their notes aloud, we would filter into like topics and have group discussions about potential action items.
Our learnings:
Here are some honest insights from our team at Industrial:
House of straw:
- Our use of epics and stories
- UAT feedback process
- Finishing the last 10%
House of sticks:
- Focussing on getting things done
- Estimating accurately
- Storyboarding
House of bricks:
- Front-end development
- Culture and onboarding
- Writing proposals
Exercise #2 - Proud & Sorry
Purpose: Discover what team members are proud and sorry about
Source: Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great
1 - I put up two posters labeled 'proud' and 'sorry’.
2 - I gave the team about 10 minutes to individually write down instances they felt proud or sorry (one instance per sticky note)
3 - When the time was up, I had everyone read out their note and post it to the appropriate poster.
4 - As each person went up to the board and read their notes aloud, we would filter into like topics and have group discussions about potential action items.
5 - End with a short conversation by asking:
- Did anything surprise you?
- What patterns do you see? What do they mean for you as a team?
Our learnings:
Here are some honest insights from our team at Industrial -
Proud:
- Multiple launches in this sprint
- Being open to new ideas
- Progress on Wicket
- Code quality and code reviews
Sorry:
- Project delays
- Being grumpy
- Putting a lot of effort into a proposal we didn’t win
Whether or not your team is practicing Agile methodologies, I strongly encourage you to, at the very least, do monthly retrospectives with your team. The insight you gain from giving everyone a voice is invaluable.