Retrospectives: Back to basics… | An exercise in herding cats

I have been to a retrospective workshop this week and I really enjoyed it, I have been facilitating retrospectives for a while, and I’ve read some of the books (remind me to write a blog about recommended reading sometime). Anyway, you get the idea, I’ve been there and got the T-shirt etc. So what value is there in attending a workshop?

Well, you’d be surprised, I was very pleasantly surprised by how much I learned!  A refresher is incredibly useful, and I would recommend it to anyone, I will certainly plan on taking time to re-attend any training and workshops even if I feel comfortable in a role.  There is always more to learn, but more significantly for me in this instance was that it reminded me of the basics and what people who are new to retrospectives are asking, and expecting.  When you get used to facilitating regularly you forget the basics, so this was incredibly useful.

So I thought I’d share some of the basics of retrospective facilitation, some may seem obvious but hopefully there will be a hidden gem that some of you may find useful.
Facilitation of retrospectives really is more art than science, no two are the same – or should I say they shouldn’t be the same, if you are having the same discussion in the same format you are doing it wrong.

1.   Be prepared

My first tip for someone new to retrospectives is to read the Derby/Larson book “Agile Retrospectives” and plan at minimum 3 types of retrospective, get familiar with them and vary your selection. When you get comfortable start adding more, or experimenting with new techniques. Some will work and some won’t. But don’t be afraid to try something new, and most of all don’t be surprised when a retro you have put a lot of time in to preparing never gets used because the team know exactly what they want to talk about. But better to be prepared and not use it than not prepare.

After a while you will get comfortable with a few styles and won’t need to prepare, many facilitators can show up at a moments notice and run a retrospective and make it look easy, but I can assure you it takes a lot of preparation and practice to make anything look easy. Most good facilitators don’t ever stop looking for new techniques or ideas, and will still spend time preparing.

Link to site with ideas for retrospectives : TastyCupcakes.org

2.  Safety first.

The basis of a retrospective is that it is a safe place where you can be open, can share and can learn, if that is not there then it’s value is severely undermined.

The team should be aware of the retrospective prime directive.

This is an area that I am ashamed to say I have not given enough consideration to.  There have only been a few times where I have considered safety to be a concern, and at least one occasion where I had to be reminded to ask – on one occasion, I said it was okay for a PM to participate in a retro without clearing it with the team.  Yep that was bad of me and yes I still feel bad about it all this time later, and yes I have learnt my lesson.    But what I hadn’t really appreciated was that my sensitivity to safety is not the same as the team members and that my duty as facilitator is to them, it is not for me to assume, it is for me to check.

Make it clear to the team that if they feel unsafe for any reason – or they think someone else on the team may feel unsafe to let you know.  I am not suggesting a safety check is necessary every time, but if there is the potential of a visitor or you have cause to think there may be an issue, then ask the team anonymously if they feel safe. Hand out identical post-it notes, same color pens to make it safer and ask them to mark safe or unsafe (tick or cross). And if even one is unsafe then talk about it or don’t allow the visitor and then talk about it.  Safety checks are a big deal, and need to be given careful consideration.

3. Ground Rules

Decision making

Decision making in a group is tricky, it is ambiguous: are they nodding in agreement or nodding to show they are listening? And so on. It can also be time consuming to try and work out if a conversation is over, or we are in agreement.   A very quick and easy way to make decisions quickly is the use of the “Decider Protocol”

Ask a simple clear question “Are we done with this topic”, or “do we agree to commit to ‘x’”  and then we mimic the gladiator decision making of Rome: everyone in the room holds out one hand and either holds Thumb-up to indicate agreement, Thumb-down to indicate disagreement and Thumb to the side to indicate ambivalence.   It may sound simplistic but I can assure you that it saves a huge amount of time in any and all meetings.

Participation

Each team should consider their own rules and set their own levels of expectation, but as a general expectation I would suggest that If you are in the room you are in the meeting. Unless there is a good reason otherwise, phones and laptops should be put away and use in the meeting is not allowed.  If the team explicitly agrees to this up front it makes it easier for the facilitator to ask them to put the phone away or leave the room. Also if possible sit close together, sitting to the side of the room is a very visual distancing yourself from the group.

One conversation

I am not sufficiently talented to concentrate on two conversations at once, so I prefer to limit the group to just one conversation. Again if this is agreed up front it is easier for the facilitator to interrupt, and bring us back to the group.  The other request is for people to speak up, very simply we all want to value what you have to say but to do that we need to hear you.

4. Engagement and Trust

I have grouped these together as they go hand-in-hand.  To get the most out of a retro we need honesty and openness, we need the team to be in a place where they feel able to give and receive constructive criticism, for them to feel at ease with their peers and safe enough to talk straight. If everyone in the room doesn’t participate it will not be a successful retro, if anyone in the room is holding back or not free to express opinions you will not get the full benefit of the retrospective.

But building teams is a challenge, there are literally hundreds of books on the subject (see what I did there?) and endless training courses. Getting a team to a point where they trust each other and work effectively together is probably the single most important aspect of business management, and I’m sure you have seen the team-building away days and many of you have likely been paint-balling or raft building with business colleagues.

So ask yourself, do I feel comfortable with my team mates, if the answer is yes they you are likely 75% towards being a great team, if you don’t then this is probably where you should start to put some focus.

But how do you build trust and engagement?  Well I read somewhere that the best way to build that trust is to play cards or games with your team over lunch, no joke, this is one of the most effective team building exercises, you have fun you chat, it is not a professional context. Or have lunch together or breakfast on a regular basis, the barriers erode and before you know it you are more at ease with each other.

But in the retrospective there are two goals the first is to get the whole team participating, the second is to get them to feel they trust each other.  Both of these can be solved by a short activity at the start of the retrospective.  The goal of the facilitator is to get everyone in the room to speak within the first 5 minutes, it doesn’t matter what they say, even if they say “I don’t have anything to say” it is important that they speak. Why? Because psychologically and on a subconscious level our stance in the first 5 minutes is the benchmark for our future engagement, it is a little bit of psych-babble but if you haven’t spoken in the first few minutes it is far harder to participate, as a facilitator we try to breakdown that barrier to make it easier.  The second goal is to build trust, we do this by sharing something, it can be shared participation in an activity and I will include a link to some great 3 minute activities, an activity can be as simple as showing your last photo taken on your phone (careful!) or your favorite childhood movie, or thinking of something fun to say. One of my former teams had “Philosophy corner” where a question was posed and the team shared their views.

Here is a link to a site with some ideas for team activities:   3-minute warm-up activities

I cannot overstate how important the first 5 minutes of the retrospective is.

Quick note on late comers, try to emphasize the imporance of them being on time, but also get them to speak when they come in, otherwise you risk them staying quiet at the back.

5.   How long and how often should a retro be?

The best answer is “It depends”.   See I told you if you read the article you would find that hidden gem, I’m sure you are thrilled you read all this to find such a helpful answer.

But it does depend, how big is your team? Very small teams tend to communicate more freely and effectively so shorter retrospectives may work, larger teams have more participants so hearing their views simply takes longer.  The more frequently you meet the less issues you will have to discuss and so on.

We know that in general the shorter the feedback loop is the more effective learning is, and the longer you leave it the harder it becomes to remember the details. If you can meet weekly, if you are doing Scrum it is set to be once a sprint, but there would be no harm in more frequent retrospectives if you feel they add value.  The benchmark is that if you are running out of time in your retro or you come out and realize you are forgetting things then make them more frequent.

If you hold them weekly and it isn’t long enough, make it longer. If you reach a conclusion or consensus early, then end the meeting early, learn and adapt your retrospectives just as you would any other aspect of your team.

6.  The stages of a retrospective

This is an example, but it is not a rule. The goal of a retrospective is to reflect and to improve, there is no hard and fast rule as to how. Sometimes just a break from the office and time together as a team is value in itself. Even if you spent the entire time playing cards or discussing philosophy or sport and the whole team was engaged then I would still consider that a valuable use of the time, perhaps not every week. But if the end result is that the team work better together it is a big win.

Don’t be constrained by rules and formulas, but also be aware that sometimes rules and formulas work because they are tried and tested we learn from empirical data and if a forumula worked for others then maybe it will work for us. My point is not that rules are bad, my point is that they should not be seen as constraints, your team knows better than anyone what is best for them.

But as we are talking retrospective basics a typical retrospective may go through 5 stages:

• Setting the Stage
• Gather Data
• Generate Insights
• Make Decisions
• Wrap-up

Essentially we enable a team to remind themselves of what has happened, both good and bad. The good is just as important as the bad, reminding us of and celebrating our successes is very valuable, please don’t over look this.  As an Englishman this can be hard, we are reserved and grow up with an expectation that we don’t reward expected outcomes. So culturally adjusting this may be necessary, we don’t have to high-five and shout ‘Good-job!’ But giving time to acknowledge our achievements is still important even if we don’t make a fuss.

Identifying areas where we can improve is a prime area for exploring ways we can get better, but it is important to remind ourselves of the prime directive here, and not to beat yourself up, mistakes are an inevitable output of exploration and learning. As a facilitator watch the room and be aware of the mood.

A man of genius makes no mistakes. 

His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

– James Joyce

This area is explored in more detail in the book and would likely be the subject of a very long blog. So I won’t expand just now. But in summary a retrospective is attempting to ask and answer 4 questions.

• What did we do well, that if we don’t discuss we might forget?
• What did we learn?
• What should we do differently next time?
• What still puzzles us?

7.  Lean Coffee

There is much more that could be said about facilitation and retrospectives, this is intended just as a quick introduction of some of the core elements and basics, I would happily delve deeper and I may share some of the wide variety of techniques, but there are a whole bunch of websites that do that so no real need to duplicate effort here.

However I will leave you with one technique that is useful as part of a retrospective or at the end of stand-up or at any point when you want to discuss something without the conversation dragging on.

I offer you Lean Coffee…

The idea is that you propose a number of conversation topics, and priorities them (vote or just order them sequentially as they are proposed)

The question is read and a timer is set for 5 minutes… Go start discussing as normal. after 5 minutes an alarm sounds and the team vote (decision protocol – thumbs-up/down) as to whether to continue the discussion, or make a decision etc. If majority vote to continue the timer is reset to 3 minutes and you repeat.

When the alarm sounds you again vote as to whether to continue and if you do this time only 1 minute to reach a consensus.

The timings can be altered or you could have a never ending 1 minute cycle, whatever works for you. but the voting identifies whether the group is still interested and engaged.

Give it a try, it can be very useful for blitzing through a number of short discussions effectively.