Liberate your Retrospectives

Audience: Scrum Masters, Product owners, managers and everyone who want to improve self and team.

What is sprint retrospective?

Scrum Guide says,

Sprint Retrospective is an opportunity for the Scrum Team to inspect itself and create a plan for improvements to be enacted during the next Sprint. 

Liberating sprint retrospectives.

When a team is doing Agile, team does sprint retrospectives to ensure one item is off their checklist of ceremonies done by the team. I remember in one engagement where the teams are measured (periodically) for their agile maturity by a senior coach of organization who requested proofs for every activity they say they did. The attitude was such that, if there is no proof, then that event never happened.

There are many teams where team does sprint retrospective and document actions with no follow up. In no subsequent sprints retrospective actions are not retrospected for its implementation.

In many teams,

1. Retrospectives are done to get a check mark in the checklist of ceremonies done.
2. Retrospectives are done for 10 minutes with lead member of team speaks on behalf of the team members
3. Retrospectives are very silent where no team members are not ready to speak
4. Retrospective actions are never implemented nor retrospected
5. and many...

We all know these are dysfunctions that exists in the team. This article describes one experiment that i did to bring engagement and commitment towards continuous improvement of the team.

Using IdeaBoardz to enable team members to talk (20 - 30 min)

There can be many reasons why team members doesn't talk during retrospective. One major reason is non trustful environment that they work in where team members doesn't trust and live in fear of What if ______?

As an anti pattern, i did observe scrum masters, run retrospective meetings like a status update meeting where, team member's names are called out and document what they think about previous sprint and many times, these comments are shared with stakeholders and hierarchies of organization.

majority of team members would say, we are doing good. Nothing much to be improved.

Also our team members can be introverts too. Most times they would not be outspoken. Their silence would put them in a corner and not much attention given to their view points.

To ensure they have a voice and the improvement points are to be anonymised, I introduced IdeaBoardz (even though they are co-located in one location) for sprint retrospective (regular 4 quadrant and Glad / Sad / Mad models). initial couple of sprints, the number of points that we received was very very minimal and after 4 sprints, team started to pour in their thoughts.

The process goes like below

1. Scrum master to send a new ideaboardz link to the team just before the retrospective start
2. Each member can choose their own place of interest to enter their comments in ideaBoardz.
3. Scrum master sets a time for the team members for entering their comments.
4. Once that timebox is over, team should get into a common room for discussing over the points.

This may seem different from the regular Agile values, but this enabled team members to enter their points without being questioned/doubted.

Once all points are collected, as a team, duplicates are merged and have unique points to discuss.

Discussing what could have been better to improve (30 min or more)

Every point in what could have been better will be discussed as a team and emerged details are added to the points. There is always a possibility of having some Things to try and Action items emerge during the discussions. These emerging items are captured.

Using Dot Voting to select top 3 action items

Once all items are discussed and required action items are captured, we used DOT VOTING method to select top 3 actions that need to be implemented.

Liberate the actions with Liberating structures micro formats to drive action & commitments

As you all know liberating structures can be a great source of methods which will help us to have focused, outcome bound conversation using which we can bring productive discussions.

In my experience, I felt 1-2-4-All and 15% solutions liberating structures micro formats are of great help.

Once the top 3 action items are selected for implementation, I facilitated conversation about what we can do to ensure actions are implemented and what are the various tasks involved in the process. The process steps are

1. Explain the Team about 1-2-4-All format and answer their questions for clarity.
2. Choose the first action
3. Start the timer
4. Let the team members think about what are various sub actions/tasks involved to implement the action for one minute
5. Ask to pair up with another team member to explain their thoughts and rationale and listen to other's thoughts and rationale.
6. Take notes when necessary and gather more information
7. After 2 minutes, ask the pair to pair-up with another group and explain the thoughts and rationale and listen to other's thoughts and rationale for four minutes.
8. Once 4 minutes is over, stop the timer for 30 seconds and allow the team to settle down.
9. Scrum Master goes to board and start collecting the thoughts and rationale of the team for 5 minutes.

Why does this work?

Since we like to join with like minded people only, during the first pair, we typically pair up with someone we like and start sharing. The crucial ice breaker happens when our pair need to find another pair after 2 minutes. Now we again try to find out like minded pair. Most times in a smaller teams, we would not always have options of pairing with like minded pairs. However, there will be pairs. This is an ice breaker. First initial few iterations, there would not be much of sharing however, later, i saw lot of changes in the dynamics.

Also, People who do not speak out gets a chance to share their ideas and thoughts. This always brings the possibility of sharing knowledge.

Trap:

• It is not easy for humans to pair up in a second.
• There is always the initial hesitant with team members. many times, sharing finishes in 10 seconds

Use 15% solution to drive commitments from team members.

One of crucial aspects of retrospection is to adjust ourselves to needed changes. With these discussions we would identify all things that are needed to improve. However, many times the implementation responsibility will be passed to Scrum master

When it comes to take responsibility, not many members in the team would be interested in taking up that responsibility. It all ties to the Psychological Safety quotient of the team. If the team is psychologically safe, all members would lead the changes. If it is not, then no one would like to take responsibility.

15% Solution structure would help facilitators to drive the members to take responsibility.

By design of 15% solution, a team member doesn't need to know the complete solution or to implement everything in first place. This structure helps to bring the initial spark that's needed to move the mountains.

15% solution gives a way to tap the knowledge of the team and what actions that can be done without any additional help/ permissions/ resources.

As a facilitator, for every selected action item, facilitate a discussion by asking open ended questions like

1. What are our options to implement action_1?
2. What are different ways to implement action_1?
3. Why do we think action_1 must be implemented? is there any alternative that give better results?
4. What do you think as different activities that are needed for action_1?
5. What is the most important activity needed to ensure action_1 progress?

Powerful questions drive powerful interactions. Liberating ourselves from our mind block would help us do better. When we have our own solutions that can be implemented within our limits, the ownership and responsibility just moved to the team members. You do not need to put additional effort other than occasional "who can ensure this activity is done?"

Implemented a better way? lets discuss