Facilitating Retrospectives for Distributed Teams

Hello, you're on a suddenly distributed team, and you want to know how to have better retrospectives! Read on.

Important: Using Approved Tools

Having worked in the corporate world for years for various industries, I have found that security is not always on the top of everyone’s mind when they are trying to get work done. If you are on an agile team or helping a distributed team, I caution you not to use tools that are not approved by your organization for use. Read this short article for more information https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/suddenly-remote-beware-shadow-heidi-araya/ ?

Preparing for the Retrospective

This is a post about online retrospectives, but it’s also a reminder on how to conduct good retrospectives in general. In the past 10 years I’ve seen many folks not prepare ahead for retrospectives and hastily put together a ‘what went well, what didn’t go well, what can we improve’ board every sprint. Routines are comfortable but not always engaging and rarely result in innovations, so think of novel ways to present information -- which will be key to continuous learning. So this article is also a reminder to up your game for retrospectives, remote or not.?

Think about how you can actively engage folks and keep them interested in their own continuous improvement. Remember, if the event happens every couple of weeks and has all the same questions, it can easily become boring…. And it’s even easier to disengage while distributed. Keep it interesting.?

If you are facilitating the retrospective, look at the data to inform some of the things you can bring up in the retrospective. Did a story take much longer than expected? Was there an unexpected blocker? Were there more customer support requests? How about defects??

If you have uneven participation in your retrospectives, consider the preparation time part of how you’ll accomplish obtaining input and opinions from everyone on the team equally.?

Hopefully your teams have approved tools that can be used for retrospectives (e.g., Google docs/ drawings, Miro, Mural, Retrium, ScatterSpoke, GoReflect, ideaboardz, etc.). If not, many video conferencing software tools have whiteboards and annotations built in.

As a facilitator, you will need to think ahead how you will use the screen share, breakout room, and annotation tools, and think about what kind of retrospective will help your team best in this moment. Make it a game to think of many different retrospective techniques. In my previous company, someone would always come up with inventive new retro formats like “Halloween Retro” where there was a smiling pumpkin (what went well), scary pumpkin (what didn’t go well), a rotten pumpkin (what no longer serves us), etc. and share with other teams that may want to use these. It is good to have fun and also important to remember that new formats help teams think outside the box.?There are many people posting free to use retrospective formats online. A simple google search can help you come up with those (and if you use Miro, the Miroverse has many of those also!).

Ground Rules?

Has your team ever discussed retrospective ground rules? If not, maybe now is a good time.?

The retrospective should be a team event where there are clear boundaries on who can attend or not attend. I’ve had some teams trust and enjoy their manager being there; others where they did not. Same with the product manager. If you are a manager, don’t assume your team wants you there, even if they say they do. You could consider taking a step back voluntarily from time to time and see what happens.?

Starting the retrospective?

Tip 1: Don’t record the retrospective! People need a safe place to speak their minds.

Tip 2: For this event, it’s helpful to have everyone on video.??

Tip 3: Start by reviewing the previous retrospective and action items from it. What panned out, what didn't?

Tip 4: Remember the circles and soup diagram

Start with a check-in

Start with a short structured few minutes at the beginning of every meeting. Here is why these are important and helpful:

https://academy.nobl.io/why-a-quick-check-in-makes-meetings-more-effective/

Option: Silent Brainstorming & “Reverse” Brainstorming

When your team has some introverts and others who don’t speak up, silent brainstorming might be something you can try. During silent brainstorming, each person takes a few minutes to think of ideas, writing down their ideas silently and privately (perhaps in a private doc or even a piece of paper). They only share their thoughts later on, when the facilitator asks for inputs. You can ask everyone how they wish to perform this thinking exercise.?

This is good because you'll get ideas from everyone, not just people who speak up most or first. In silent brainstorming, you can ask a challenging question that benefits from time for individual reflection.?

Or you could present a happy future state, and let the team come up with ideas on how to arrive at that happy state (also called a futurespective or ‘imagine the future.’ Agendashift (Mike Burrows) has a great exercise for this!

Reverse Brainstorming, on the other hand, presents a worst-case future and asks the team to reflect on what caused it to happen. This is often a really fun session and I’ve seen teams get into the spirit. It’s often easier to define a poor outcome than a great one, so you may want to try this exercise!?

How to do Silent Brainstorming Online

I personally prefer to have folks turn off the camera and put themselves on mute while they are thinking and screen sharing a timer to count down the remaining time (since noise stops me from thinking at my best). On the other side of the spectrum, I know some folks like to play music. I had a team that had a designated “retro and demo DJ”. Find out what your team wants to try, and give it a go.?

Option: Pairing using Breakout Rooms?

People are often shy to speak up, and many times one person may contribute much more than the others. I have found that putting folks into a breakout room to discuss the themes, or a burning question, and then bringing everyone back together, breaks the ice some and creates a good environment for productive discussion.?

You may think you have a psychologically safe environment, but try this and see how folks like it in your retrospectives!?It’s also hard to disengage/be bored if you’re pairing up with just one other person for 10 minutes in the beginning of a retro with the goal of brainstorming things that align with the retro theme.

Bringing People Together

As you go through the retrospective, remember that the questions are the key. Use open questions to glean more information from the information you are gathering. Be sure to dig in and find out things that are not just on the surface level.

1. Data, where it exists, is key.
2. Talk about the problem, not the person (Sam didn't review my code ... vs "code reviews in general seem to take longer than they could, which increases cycle time)

Closing the retrospective

Now that you done with the "body" of the retro, make sure you have specific, concrete actions and name who will do them.

Wrapping up the article

As you have discovered, this is about ways to be creative to accomplish retrospective goals. if you're not learning and improving, your team is falling behind. Whichever format you use and however you hold your retrospective, they quickly become useless unless you focus on things the team can change, pick a small number of action items, and follow up on them. This is the heart of inspect and adapt, after all.?

Meta-Retrospectives

Every so often, ask the team how to improve retrospectives either as part of the regular format or, if your team has been struggling with retrospective actions and is bored, hold a special retro-retro. If your retrospectives are always formal, make a themed retro like "if this retro was a movie/animal, what would it be?" and have fun with it.

Good luck. If this post helped you, feel free to click the share button!?