What are various ways to facilitate Retrospective?

A retrospective is an event where the agile teams gather ideas, provide feedback, reflect, learn, and change their way of working, resolve team conflicts. It is an event where the team inspects and adapts to the process, which will build the culture of continuous improvement in teams. As a great Scrum Master or an Agile enabler, we are bound to energize retrospectives so it is a most wanted event by team members.

Running a retrospective exhibits the real art of facilitation. The facilitator plays an important role in making the retrospectives effective. Which is said to be the most powerful tool for building a high-performing team. It also helps to make sure the team is aligned on overall vision and goals, keeps all the team members informed. Retrospectives always follow five stages even when it's run in any form. Setting the Stage, Gathering Data, Generating Insights, Deciding on What to Do Next, Closing the Retrospective. Let us see in detail how facilitators can help teams to get more value out of their retrospectives.

Role of a facilitator - It starts with the role of the facilitator where he needs to plan the meeting and assures that the team members attend the retrospective, selecting appropriate theme-based exercises and prepares them, Runs the retrospective, follow up on the actions. Ensures transparency, focus on the objective, build resilience for your team members, strike a balance between negatives and positives, create a Sense of Responsibility in team members, Nail down or derive few key metrics to track, build a routine in the team to have retrospectives as practice makes them perfect. Choose a different location to give a comfortable environment for the team to speak up.

The facilitator must ensure that there are openness and honesty. All team members participate actively, assures that there is a shared understanding, helps the team decide on the action items to take care of. Very important to note that the purpose of the retrospective is not to blame people. The facilitator should never have a personal stake in the outcome of the retrospective. Smart enough to deal with any negative issues. Sometimes being silent and help people think and reflect is another skill. Active listening is again very useful in retrospectives, where recaps help ensure that we are all on the same page. Newly formed teams will look for anonymity until they get their psychological safety. Till then use any anonymous way of collecting feedback. Must be in a neutral stance, where constructive conflicts are encouraged but also ensure that the event is not evolving into arguments or being a complaint forum.

How to facilitate - To Foster participation from teams always try to switch the theme or format of the retrospective which makes it more exciting for the teams. Always keep an eye on the list of action items and track them to a closure which will allow the team to recognize the value of the retrospectives. Let us look at different Retrospective methods below, document everything in confluence, or any document management tool so that team can look at its progress.

Start with an Icebreaker – An ice breaker is critical to get people engaged. The objective is to get everyone to talk at least once. Getting the ice broken early will get more participation to run a successful retrospective. Easy icebreakers include: What is your weekend plan, what is your favorite (color, animal, vacation spot, etc), What did you think about (movie, tv-show, school play, local food), Play a short game (Pictionary, Dumb charades). The idea here is to start people talking. The more comfortable they are during the ice breakers, the more honest will be their feedback during the retrospective.

Start, stop, continue – Have “Start,” “Stop,” and “Continue” columns and a few sticky notes. Start: actions we must start, stop: actions we must prevent or remove, continue: actions we must keep doing.

Good, bad, better, best - The “Good, Bad, Better, Best” is much like the “Start, Stop, Continue” exercise where the team pens their observations on separate cards. Where Good: what went well exceeding the expectations. Bad: what didn’t work well, where we didn’t meet expectations or where unexpected problems occurred. Better: Areas for improvement, how to do something better. Best: deserves recognition, outstanding performance.

The 4L’s – The Four Ls method is a very simple way to gather feedback from the team on what they liked, lacked, learned, and longed for. Where Liked: anything to be appreciated, Lacked: things that made the team closer to success, Learned: any lessons learned, Longed for: anything the team craves for its success.

Sailboat Method – The sailboat method is a metaphorical retrospective which is visual learning. draw a sailboat, wind, an anchor, an iceberg. Collocated teams draw the Sailboat on a whiteboard while the distributed teams can use a tool such as Mural, Fun retro, Retrium, etc. The team adds their feedback to the relevant areas on the picture. The wind simulates what moves the team forward. The anchor is what pulled the team down. The iceberg is anything unexpected or unforeseen conditions.

Affinity Mapping – Affinity mapping is another efficient method for obtaining feedback in a short amount of time. Receive the feedback and then analyze patterns and group similar items (ex. Requirement issues, Team/Culture issues, Events issues, etc). Scrumblr is a free tool that can be used for affinity mapping.

Unspoken Taboo – start this technique with stress on confidentiality. Announce that this activity is silent and all "evidence" will be destroyed. Give each participant a sheet of paper and ask them to write down the unspoken taboo in the team. Then pass on their paper to their colleagues where they read and may add comments. It is passed on till it’s back to their authors for the last review. Then all pages are ceremoniously shredded. But use with utmost caution!

Dot Voting - if there are a lot of ideas that emerge, use dot voting on which action items you'll prioritize in the immediate term. Everyone grabs a marker and dot votes on the ideas. Count the votes, discuss the results with the team, and let them self-organize on ownership of action items.

The Game of Feedback - The game of feedback is a technique that gives an insight towards our personality which is used to initiate a deeper conversation about attitude and behavior. Example - use to answer questions like: What are team qualities? How do others perceive our team? What are the qualities that our team needs to improve? It helps the team understand their qualities and what they need to improve as a whole team’s feelings.

Acknowledgments - Let team members acknowledge each other's accomplishments since the last retrospective and/or express gratitude for the help received from a teammate. Keep it brief, and keep it genuine. But don't force it.

Focus driven Retrospective (EDBI) - Have a clear focus on process, goals, and vision, or adjusting commitments. Start writing the overall team goal on the board. Enablers – what makes it easy for the team to achieve the goal, Disabler – What prohibits the team daily from achieving their goal, Blockers – any distractions that cause problems, Ideas - new things a team can try to achieve its goal.

Mad Sad Glad Technique – Ask the team to express with emoticons, what were some avoidable things that made them mad, what were unavoidable things that made them sad, what were things that helped the team progress towards their goal to make them glad.

The Game of constellation - Gather the team around and place a sphere in the middle of free space. The sphere represents the Centre of agreement. Move towards the center if you agree and outwards if you don't agree. Have the Scrum values and see what is missing?

The retrospective looks to be a tricky meeting to learn, but easy once everyone becomes comfortable and willing to participate. Provide the team with a chance to vote and express their concerns about how they are working. Hold people accountable for action items. Try some of the above techniques in your next retrospective. Retrospective can be a fun exercise the team looks forward to at the end of every iteration.