Retrospective script - Sailboat

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 a very visual way of finding our improvement actions. You will need a big piece of paper or preferrably a whiteboard. And some post-its.

This retrospective takes about 45 minutes

Preparations

You could do this as part of the retrospective but I find it will be sloppy and I get nervous doing it in front of people.

You could also print and use that as your template

• Draw a sailboat in the middle of the whiteboard
• Add wind to represent the things that push us on
• Add some rocks under the water to represent dangerous scary stuff that might sink us
• Add a deployed anchor that is holding / slowing us down
• Add a gazing sun that represents the things that we are appreciating
• Finally add an island the potential or

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 (15 min)

• Point to the different parts of the drawing and explain what they represent
  • Use the descriptions above
  • or use this legend
    • Boat - us, the team
    • Wind - speeds us up
    • Anchor - slows us down
    • Rocks - risks
    • Island - Opportunities
    • Sun - Appreciations
• Ask the participants to add a post-it to whatever area they feel like

Gather insights (20 min)

• Ask the participants to add their post-its on the board and describe and clarify how they are thinking
• Once everyone is done - group the topics that belongs together
• Now discuss and come up with a few (max 2) action points

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