Christmas time is coming and many of us, scrum masters are probably thinking about how to close the year with our teams.
There are many ways how to handle such Retrospectives so let us introduce one of our format which can be easily used not only at the end of the year but also when reaching a milestone, overcoming an obstacle, or closing a period.
This format was handled online and the whole concept was prepared on the Miro board.
The preparation of the board took approximately 30 minutes, depending on your Miro skills.
For a team of about 9 members, we needed 90 minutes to have enough space for talking and sharing thoughts.
The first part – key moments over time
Instructions:
- Agree on a look-back time for the exercise – at least the last 3 months
- Now is the time for individual preparation – each team member thinks about key moments, important situations, or milestones that stick in the memory (approx. 10 minutes)
- Write down one moment per sticky
- When everyone finishes preparing tickets, you can limit the number of stickies shared per person – this depends on how much time you want to invest in it or what your expected outcome is
- Now one after another places the sticky note at the appropriate place in time (horizontal axis) and according to the feelings they had at that time
- If the session is online, you can place some photos
Now is the time for the second part of the board – drawing!
The name of the participants are written one under another. Each name has a different color. After everybody placed their important events and moments on the axis, is time to draw a line over time as in the picture below.
By drawing the lines you can see how particular emotions vary and where are the common ups and downs. Once all are done with the drawing, you are ready to start sharing.
Before team members share what they put on the axis, it is important to remind them that it is about how they felt at the time when the event occurred, not how they are feeling now.
Instructions follow:
- Each person describes why they put the cards in the given place
- When the person describes all the stickies, then also describes his/her drawing
- If somebody else wants to share the same situation, they can do that directly and also share their point of view
- Remember, we can perceive the same situation differently and feel about it in different ways, it is important to let people talk about it
When everybody got a chance to speak, you as a facilitator can direct attention to the overall picture. It can look like the one below.
Now is the time to reflect. You can ask questions like:
- After sharing and hearing all those events and moments, what is on your mind right now?
- What were the strongest emotions? and why?
There are more ways how to continue. You can now close the session and follow up on some topics from the discussion later on in a different meeting.
Or you can expand the session and focus on the team values which can be identified in the events displayed on the axis. You can dig deeper and identify those values by understanding why certain events are perceived positively/negatively and how they interfere with the team’s values. For this, another 60 minutes could be needed.
Another option is to direct the discussion to improvements. Bring attention to all the moments with the most emotional impact and try to identify rout causes, and what can be done differently in the future. Again, this kind of discussion could need additional 60 minutes, depending on the size of the team.
We recommend repeating the session after some time and also experimenting with the format.
What is working for us does not have to work for you. But definitely, we want to hear about your experience!