The Flow-Centered Retrospective — Learn to Make Your Team Flow

Flow is a commonly used term in the lean and agile community. It’s a desirable state in which work gets done with ease and waste is eliminated. Wouldn’t it be nice to give the teams a structured way to achieve flow?

This article is a re-post from the idealo medium tech blog.

In this article, I’m going to introduce a retrospective format that helps teams to identify factors helping them achieve flow. Flow allows the team to get its work done with less drag but with high energy.

The state of flow

The state of flow — or being in the zone — is a mental state that is quite well understood. It’s a state “of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity.” [Wikipedia] You’ve maybe experienced this state while painting, playing, reading or doing sports. This is a desirable state of being since it combines a very high focus with very low consumption of mental energy. In other words, things happen easily, almost automatically. This creates a feeling of control, self-confidence, and accomplishment. And it’s fun.

It is also quite well understood what a person needs in order to enter the zone but I will get to that later.

For teams, flow means to achieve a high outcome with almost no friction, less time spent and higher satisfaction. I would love to have teams to work in a flow state as often as possible.

In lean management and in the theory of constraints (TOC) the concept of flow is addressed from a different angle. There we don’t consider the flow state of a person but the flow state of a piece of work. Although the individual perspective and the perspective of the piece of work are quite different they fit together neatly as we will see below.

So, when the state of flow is positive and a desirable “place to be” then why don’t we try to help teams to enter the zone together?

The intentions of the flow-centered retrospective

The retrospective is designed to achieve three distinct outcomes. The first is to let the team understand the concepts of flow and why it matters in their daily work. The second is to let the team identify moments of flow that they — may be unconscious — experienced in the past already and to let them figure out what circumstances let to those moments of flow. The third outcome is the transfer of these learnings to situations where there was an absence of flow and to identify possible changes to the working to make them more “flowish”.

While the first outcome is achieved by input and reflection, the second and third outcome are based on group work with real data of the team’s backlog item delivery history.

This might lead to specific “action items” for the team. However, the retrospective can be considered a success already if the team understands that boundary conditions of their work significantly change the likelihood of flow experiences and that those boundary conditions can be altered actively to create flow.

This retrospective is designed to improve the team’s efficiency and mental health. It takes not into consideration if the things done by the team are actually worth doing. In that sense, it is about efficiency and not about effectiveness.

Preparing the retrospective

The concepts of flow

To have a smooth experience in the retrospective you may want to prepare yourself a bit. First, it’s helpful to get an understanding of the concepts of flow. I recommend approaching flow from the angles of psychology and lean management/theory of constraints. Don’t worry, you don’t need to be an expert in either of those fields to achieve an effective retrospective.

You may want to start with the following posts to get a good first bite.

• Wikipedia on flow (psychology)
• Flow State: What It Is and How to Achieve It
• What is Flow and Why it Matters
• Using Flow In Lean Manufacturing
• Understanding the Principle of Flow in Lean Manufacturing
• Theory of Constraints 101: Applying the Principles of Flow to Knowledge Work
• Theory of Constraints 103: The Four Fundamental Principles of Flow

For the retrospective itself, it is sufficient to bring three ideas of Prof. Csikszentmihalyi into the room.

The state of flow needs:

• Clarity
• Continual and fast feedback
• Challenges that match the capabilities of the people

Since you want those three principles visibly in the retrospective you might want to prepare a flip chart with those three boundary conditions upfront.

In addition to that, it is helpful to keep in mind that it is far more likely to achieve flow in a working environment in which one can act largely autonomous. If the boundaries are to tight flow gets blocked. If the boundaries are to lose the resulting lack of clarity also hinders the rise of flow.

From the perspective of lean management flow basically means the absence of non-flow. Non-flow may be created by any of the eight types of waste but mainly by waiting time. So it is helpful to have a poster with the eight forms of waste prepared as well. Some find it helpful to use the acronym “DOWNTIME” to name the eight forms of waste since it seems to be more memorable:

• Defects
• Overproduction
• Waiting
• Non-value processing
• Transport
• Inventory
• Motion
• Employee knowledge unused

The right time and place

Since I assume that you already have your retrospectives scheduled regularly I keep this part rather short. Schedule at least one and a half hours for the format described here. If you have more time it’s even better. You find an agenda below that allows some de-scoping if you want to fit the retrospective into a smaller retrospective time slots. If you cannot fit this retrospective format into your regular retro-schedule feel free to use this description and weave it into a workshop format.

Give yourself up to 20 Minutes upfront to prepare the room for the retrospective. If you have to book your meeting room, take that into consideration. Group work is an essential part of this flow-centered retrospective. That’s why you may want a generous meeting room.

Notebooks welcome

Although this is not typical for a retrospective the team will be allowed to use their notebooks in the group work section. So it is worth mentioning this in the calendar invitation and in the daily standup. You don’t want to waste precious time with team members that have to get their notebooks in the time scheduled for the retrospective. Not every member of the team needs a notebook. One out of three is sufficient.

Analyze the teams working history

Since the second and third intended outcome of this retrospective shall be the team’s reflection on situations where there was and where they lacked flow we need historical team data on backlog item flow. I assume that your team uses some kind of ticketing tool (e.g. Jira or LeanKit). That makes it easy for you to analyze the working history of the team.

What you are looking for are the historical lead times of your teams delivered backlog items of the last 12 weeks. In Jira, you find those in the control chart. In LeanKit you find them in the speed diagram.

Those diagrams show you at a glance how long the lead times of the team’s backlog items have been at best and at worst and everything in between.

In order to support the second intention of that retrospective, you want to pick 10 backlog items with significantly short lead times. Note every single backlog item ID on a green sticky note. The third intention of the retrospective is all about the improvement of flow. That’s why you pick 15 backlog item IDs with significantly long lead times. Write each ID on a sticky note as well.

To enable the team to later perform that analysis on their own you may want to print out the diagram. Print it large enough that everybody in the room has a chance to see and understand it.

The model of the team’s value stream (optional)

Your team might have an explicit model of their value stream. If yes, that’s great! It helps the team to identify specific areas of improvement. Bring a large printout of that value stream into the retrospective. It’s no big deal if you don’t have that model. You will be able to achieve the desired outcomes of the retrospective without that model as well.

The prime directive of retrospectives

If your team is absolutely familiar with the prime directive of retrospectives you might skip this part. Otherwise, create a visualization of the prime directive of retrospectives. In the flow-centered retrospective, you dive deep into the team’s actual work. That’s why the reference to the prime directive might be helpful to make clear that we are there to learn and not to blame.

Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand. [The prime directive of retrospectives]

The weather report template

Prepare the template for the weather report Check-in.

Group work instructions

Prepare a flip chart that clearly states the following instructions on how the group work in the flow-centered retrospective is performed.

Setup: Form small groups of three people per group

1. Pick a backlog item ID from the wall
2. Analyze the corresponding backlog item.
3. How did the delivery process take place?
4. When did the backlog item make a transition between value stream states (status)?
5. What is significant when you look at the flow of delivery?
6. When was there flow?
7. When was there a disruption of flow?
8. Which patterns do occur?
9. Go back to step 1.

That’s it. Now bring it all together in one agenda.

Prepare the agenda

If it eases your mind prepare the agenda upfront on a flip chart. The agenda consists of the following elements. If you are very limited in your time you can cut corners by leaving out the optional parts. However, although they are optional I find them useful to help the team to get in the right mood.

• [optional] Weather report
• (This is just to collect the general mood of the people in the room. If it is really bad then it might not be the right time for the flow-centered retrospective. Adress the pressing issues instead.)
• [optional] The prime directive of retrospectives
• [optional] Why retrospectives?
• (This is meant to bring the team in the mood of improving flow.)
• The concepts of flow
• Group work — in search of flow
• Plenum: Collecting the insights
• Areas of improvement activities

That’s it for preparation. Yes, it takes some upfront work. However, if you perform the flow-centered retrospective more than once you can reuse almost all of the prepared artifacts.

Set the stage

Some minutes before the retrospective starts to bring all the prepared artifacts to the walls in the meeting room. You might want to set up the room in a way that you can reveal the boundary conditions of flow, the eight forms of waste and the group work instruction later at the specific point in the retrospective.

Surf the retrospective

Start the retrospective on time since you want to use every precious minute of the scheduled time. After a warm welcome, you introduce the agenda to the participants.

The weather report

Ask the team members to come to the prepared weather report artifact and make their cross. Let each of them express briefly what makes them feel the way expressed. If there is no significantly bad mood in the team proceed with the prepared agenda. Otherwise, skip the agenda and address the pressing issues in the room.

The prime directive

Shed the light on the prime directive of retrospectives. Experienced teams don’t have to spend too much time on that. If the team is not fully accustomed to retrospectives let the group discuss a bit what that statement means to them and how they would recognize that the performed retrospective complies with the prime directive.

The purpose of retrospectives

After everyone is seated again start the round-robin session and ask for the purpose of a retrospective. This is a very quick format in which you go one by one in the team to collect one item per person which you write down on a wall immediately. If someone has nothing to add he or she just says “next” which happens the next person in the group to make his or her point. Give yourself up to 5 minutes to collect the thoughts by going several rounds through the participants. Stop when the time is up or no-one in the room wants to add anything new.

In the best case, your team already expresses something that is loosely flow-related. If that is the case you can moderate smoothly to the next topic on the agenda. Otherwise, you have to spend some more minutes to create a relation between the statements mentioned and the concepts of flow. That’s why it makes sense to spend some time reading about the concepts of flow while preparing the retrospective.

The concepts of flow in action

Introduce the concepts of flow. It is easier to approach that topic from the angle of lean management. Distinguish between flow and disruption of flow. Use the visualization of the eight forms of waste to support your explanation.

Usually, teams have a pretty good idea of what you are discussing with them. Ask the participants to give short examples where they experienced waste and disruptions of flow.

Since the eight forms of waste originating in the production of physical goods it might need some support by you as a facilitator to map the terminology onto the realm of knowledge work.

If it is not obvious to the team already help them to understand that lead time can be considered as a representation metric of flow. To make it easily digestible for the participants let's assume that shorter lead time is generally a good indicator of flow.

Now approach the concept of flow from the angle of psychology. Briefly describe the individual state of flow and let the participants come up with examples in which they’ve personally experienced the state of flow. This part of the retrospective shall feel like a conversation.

Reveal the three boundary conditions that enable the state of flow for an individual. Briefly describe that flow can be created by the right conditions. Let this sink in for some seconds and ask the group how this boundary conditions match with their personal experiences. Let them think out loud for a short time one at a time.

Bring it together. The concept of lean management flow and the individual state of flow have quite a lot in common. We see that we need clarity, fast feedback and a challenge that matches the individual capabilities. We recognize that those conditions cannot be met if our flow of work creates long waiting times, overproduction, defects and wasted talent. Waiting time impedes fast feedback, overproduction and defects generate the need for context switches which reduce the clarity of work and the wasted talent contradicts the fit of capability and challenge. You might recognize how neatly those two concepts of flow fit together.

Since a team consists of individuals and a group of individuals can experience flow together it’s evident that both concepts of flow are highly applicable and relevant to the teams daily work.

The group work

When you have the feeling that the participants got the direction in which you are heading you can start the group work. Expose the control chart and the instruction of the group work. If the team is not familiar with the control chart give a very brief explanation where it comes from, what it shows and how you are going to use this diagram in this retrospective.

Show the ticket IDs to the team and start the group work. Now the participants are allowed to pull out their computers and start the analysis. This should not take longer than 25 minutes. It is not necessary to perform an in-depth analysis of every backlog item. No need to view commits or pull-requests. It is also not necessary to get through all the backlog items that you’ve prepared. The patterns will emerge already after just a hand full of backlog items.

Let the groups write down their findings on sticky notes.

The plenum

Discuss the findings in the plenum. Let each small group present the analyzed backlog items. They may describe if there was an individual or team flow or flow of work. They are invited to point out if there is something particularly interesting with this backlog item delivery history.

Since some of your prepared backlog items have short lead times and others long the findings will reveal good practices as well as real anti-patterns.

For instance, the group members might point out that a backlog item was in the backlog (queue) for several months without having any priority but have been discussed several times before it has ultimately been closed without actually developing it. Or that the specifications have been unclear for a long time or changed again and again. They might describe that they didn’t know how to build a specific feature or maybe that the work did not flow through the system but switches workflow status back and forth. All those descriptions might indicate some sort of flow disruption.

However, the groups might also describe that they had everything they needed together in one sprint so that they had been able to deliver a full-fledged feature in just some days. Or they point out that this particular backlog item was developed in that experimental mob-programming session in record time.

After the group briefly presented the analyzed backlog items they want to highlight the patterns that emerged.

Group by group presents the backlog items, their findings, and the identified patterns. You may cluster the patterns using the sticky notes.

Use the patterns to improve the working environment

Based on the group findings you point to the flow diagram again and indicate the latest backlog items with long lead times. Since the groups have identified some good practices on how to support flow they can easily come up with areas with potential for improvement. Ask the participants to come up with counter-measures to tackle long lead times in the future and to aim for a more flow-oriented working environment. Let them write their ideas on sticky notes.

After up to 10 minutes let them present their ideas. They might come up with ideas like “one mob-story per sprint”, “use the refinement to understand what we need before we start the work”, “if we need the Ops-Engineer in this future sprint, let’s invite him today to sit next to us that we can avoid ticket-hand-offs” or “if clarity makes us faster let’s create a more fine-grained and visual plan for the story after the daily stand-up” and so on.

In the second last step of the retrospective let the participants vote for two experiments that they want to start immediately. Dot voting should do the trick. Make sure that the experiment is described in a way that it can be conducted easily. Otherwise, spend the remaining time on being as specific as possible on who is going to do what until when to not lose momentum.

Check-out

Before everybody leaves the room ask the participants to say in one sentence what was the most valuable insight that he or she got out of this special retrospective. You can use one round of round-robin again to collect your answers.

Thank everybody in the room for their participation and you’re out. Support your team after that retrospective with a helping hand and reflections to keep the learnings vibrant and meaningful.

Summary

This retrospective is specifically designed to make the conditions that create flow explicit and to make use of them when designing the teams flow of work. The perspectives of lean management flow and of the individual state of flow are two sides of the same coin. If the team understands the implications of these concepts they are more likely capable to alter their working environment to support team flow and flow of work.

If the team improves the way work flows through their value stream they increase the likelihood of experiencing the state of flow during their working hours, which is absolutely desirable.

References

• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• The Essence of TameFlow by Steve Tendon
• Hyper-Productive Knowledge Work Performance: The Tameflow Approach and Its Application to Scrum and Kanban by Steve Tendon
• The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen