What retrospectives formats have you been using in the past?
The retrospective format provided by Scrum Guide contains three elements:
What worked?
What isn’t it?
Action points to improve
This is a common format used by Scrum teams. But after a while, using the same thing becomes monotonous. Also, each team is different, so the same formula may not apply to all. The agile world has a variety of retrospective ideas, such as basic questions, distinctions and trade-offs between creative facilitation methods. The
Scrum Master needs to develop a toolkit of retroactive methods that can be applied and adapted to the team. Let’s take a look at some:
Sailboat Ideas draw a speedboat on a flip chart and tell the team “If our team is this speedboat, which anchor hinders us and we are faster / Is it preventing you from getting better? ” The team then collects all the ideas on Post-Its, puts them under the boat, and draws a line from the boat to the anchor.
Speedcar This is a simple activity that helps teams identify what speeds up and what slows down. Other ideas include:
Liked, learned, lacked, longed for (4 L’s)
Starfish (small, large)
Stop, start, continue
Mad, sad, glad