Retrospective script - the walk & talk

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 an outdoors-y exercise that is easy going and requires little preparation. This retrospective also is very low facilitation-impact needed - so you can be part of the retrospective too!

I wrote an longer version of this description on my blog

This retrospective takes about 45 minutes. You need outdoor clothes.

Preparations

• Find a location about 10-12 walk away. From EpiCenter it would be the castle or the town hall for example
• Meet at your desks at the time for the retrospective, with their outdoor clothes nearby.
• Prepare two post-its or space on your board to write down the improvement actions

Review (5 min)

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

Generate data (20 min)

• Ask the group to divide up in pairs (or threes)
• Tell the location you are going to.
  • You might wanna share a link to the exact location
• Give a, one, postive-spun question to talk and ponder, for example:
  • “What was the best thing that happened last iteration?”
  • “What made us great last week”
  • “What was the thing that made you happy”
• Head off to your location
  • Tell them to walk to the location and in their pairs talk about the topic chosen
• Join one pair as you walk.

Gather insights (20 min)

The sight

• Once you meet at the location you decide - share what each pair talked about
• Then pose the walk-back-home-question:
  • “How can we amplify that good thing in the next week(s)”
• Change pairs - so that I don’t walk with all the same people back home
  • Walk back home

The homecoming

• When you are back home - spend two minutes writing down 1-2 improvment actions.
• Use dotvoting to find one or two candidates. Not more
• Remember that the improvement actions is what we will improve in the next week
  • Not the rest of our lives for ever and ever, amen!

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