the kama sutra of retrospectives

The Kama Sutra of Retrospectives

Problems?

Technique: Dot Vote

6 Thinking Hats

Goal: Effectively organize discussing emotional, rational, positive, negative feedbacks.Time: approximately 1 hour

6 Thinking Hats

• Brief summary of De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats process.• Blue Hat – objectives for the session.• White Hat – generating facts from the last iteration.• Yellow Hat – focus on positive things.• Black Hat – focus on negative things.• Green Hat – ideas about improvement from the helicopter view.• Red Hat – emotive statements.• Conclusions and actions.

Spider Web

Goal: Measure important areas of the process by the team. Time: approximately 1 hour

Spider Web

• Explain idea and how to rate areas• Define important areas of discussion• Draw the spider web on the white board• Distribute the pieces of paper to everyone to draw the same

spider web and rate the areas• Gather papers and accumulate the results from everyone• Discuss each area• Work out the improvement plan

Appreciative Retrospective

Goal: Focus on improvements, instead of fixing problems.Time: approximately 1 hour

Appreciative Retrospective

• Setting stage and check in• Gather information (group brainstorm or individual post-it

notes):o Successeso Strengtho Positive events

• Group the post-its or facts• Generate plan

Top 5

Goal: Expose the most pressing issues in an anonymous mannerTime: approximately 45 minutes

Top 5

• Gather top 5 issues from people via email• Draw all the issues on the whiteboard• Ask the team to group the issues• Generate actions to solve problems (effective when working

in pairs and then escalating the results to the group)• Generate plan

Plan of Actions Retrospective

Goal: Focus on generating clear plan and taking actionsTime: approximately 40 minutes

Plan of Actions Retrospective

• Gather information from the team memberso Long-term goal: e.g. have test automation on acceptance-

test levelo Now-Action: e.g. Vasya will automate one test using

Selenium

• Objectives, Activities, Deliveries

• Bass Vode’s (http://bit.ly/KamaSutra_ActionPlan) plan of action – individual action generation, pairs select top actions, whole group discuss top actions

Start/Stop/Continue/More/Less

Goal: Make the retrospective meeting short.Time: 10-25 minutes.

Start/Stop/Continue/More/Less

• Draw a circle on a poster, divide it into 5 sections and write the words "start", "stop", "continue", "more of" and "less of" around each section.

• Gather information.• Generate action plan.

Force Field Analysis

Goal: Focus on specific area, discuss drivers and restrainsTime: approximately 60 minutes

Force Field Analysis

• Pick a topic• Set the timer and give the team five minutes to list all the

supporting/driving factors for the topic• Identify top drivers• List all the inhibiting/restraining factors for the topic.• Identify top restrains• Try to find relations between drivers and restrains factors• Generate action plan

• Description is here http://bit.ly/KamaSutra_ForceField

Pomodoro Retrospective

Goal: Focus on specific topics, shorten the time for retrospectiveTime: approximately 30 minutes

Pomodoro Retrospective

• Generate the list of topics to discuss• 5 minutes to discuss each topic• 2-3 minutes to get summary• Plan actions

Question Retrospective

Goal: Focus on specific topics, shorten the time for retrospectiveTime: approximately 30 minutes

Question Retrospective

• Before the retro, prepare sheets of paper for each team member each having a different question on the top, for example:o In this sprint, what things happened that were unusual?o In this sprint, what things did we do well?o In this sprint, what did we do that we should avoid doing

in the future?• The questions will be distributed at random to team

members.• Each person writes something, then passes the sheet to their

left, then writes something on the next sheet…

Same/More/Less

Plus/Minus/Interesting

Works Well/Needs Improvement

MAX UPGRADE NEEDS TO BE UPGRADED

Plus/Delta

Who? How? When? How to verify?

Retrospective of Retrospectives

Self-Retrospective

Decision Log

http://bit.ly/KamaSutra_Self

Distributed Retrospectives

• Separate individual vs. joint improvements• Individual meeting before joint• Offline part: use surveys• More time to check in• Use wiki to store results!

References

• Retrospective Plans http://bit.ly/KamaSutra_Plans

• Lateral Thinking http://bit.ly/KamaSutra_DeBono

• Self Retrospective http://bit.ly/KamaSutra_Self

Problems? Questions?