Retrospective script - Proud and worries

The purpose of this, and every retrospective, is to help us to improve by coming up with a few concrete improvement actions that we can complete / test / do until the next retrospective. Small, concrete actions are preferred before large lofty goals that we don’t reach anytime soon. There will be another retrospective in a few weeks.

This particular retrospective is small and simple but makes a nice distinction between two topics that often gets confused and entangled: technology and process. The technology is the thing we build and the tools we use etc. The process refers how we work together and HOW we are using the tools we have. Very often we focus on the one and not the other. Or mix them up.

This retrospective takes about 45 minutes. You need a whiteboard/big paper and some post-its.

Preparations

• Draw a smiley with a big grin (very happy) on the top,center of the whiteboard
• Draw a worried smiley at the bottom, center of the whiteboard
• Draw a line in between
• Write Tech on the left side of the line
• Write Process on the right side of the line

Review (5 min)

• Read the previous improvment actions
• Did we do them?
  • If no - why not?
  • If yes - what happened?
• What should we think about writing new action items?

Generate data (10 min)

• Explain what the scale means
  • From worried to proud
• Explain what the areas mean:
  • Tech is about the things we are building (or tools we are using)
  • Process is about how we cooperate together
• Ask people to write post-its describing how they think we are doing right now
  • Write one thing per post it
  • Write eligible
  • Allow for 5 minutes of writing

Gather insights (20 min)

• Invite people to add their post-its to the board
  • Explain what you wrote and why you are posting them where you are placing it
• Group things that goes together
  • They can be from different areas
• Priorities using dot voting to get suggestions / areas for improving
  • Discuss to get the actionable improvement suggestions

Close retrospective (2 min)

• Thank everyone for participating
• Do a fist-of-five vote for how good the retrospective was
• Ask participants to write, if the want, a post-it on what would make improve their rating
• Bring the action items to your mob station