Teamwork Tuesday #3: Are you running retrospectives with your team?

[#1]

Happy Teamwork Tuesday 🌮!

This week, when browsing the Atlassian blog, I found a great article about Team retrospectives with many useful tips on how to make your retros more productive and less boring

👉 https://www.atlassian.com/blog/teamwork/revitalize-retrospectives-fresh-techniques

The Atlassian blog is full of interesting work-life balance and teamwork articles. Teamwork Tuesday is a place to discuss some of the recommended practices! It's kind of like an Atlassian blog book club 😁📚

I'm an absolute fan of retros, and they're one of my favorite ceremonies to run.

I was lucky that all the teams I ever worked with had built deep trust and friendships, which meant that Retros were more productive and honest.

We could sit down and talk about our wins and worries, try to find solutions, and offer help.

Here is an example of what our retro boards look like  (I'm really proud of those dog emoji icons 🙈) 👇

Most of the time, the good outweighs the bad, but there have been occasions in the last three years when the "Bad" column has gotten close to the "Good" ones. Which is okay; there are ups and downs. But we were glad we could talk about problems in a safe space, usually finding out that it's not only us (individuals) going through the thing but the whole team.

But maybe our retros can use some refresh. In the article, I found a nice example of running retros as a "Sailboard" that helps you change the perspective. We might try this one out 👇

What about you? Are you running retros with your team? What format do you use?

[Amanda Barber]

We run bi-weekly retros and occasionally project-focused retros. I like the set way we do our bi-weekly retros which is just an anonymous form to share went well, went badly, anything on your mind, and shout outs.

I love using the retro ideas from Atlassian when we do project-specific retros to help mix things up!

Your retro board is the cutest I've seen by far! 😻

[Dave Mathijs]

@Nikki Zavadska [Appfire] Those dog emoji icons look great. 🐾

Our team has a quarterly retro. Looking at Amanda's answer, I'm wondering whether we should increase the interval. 🤔

We use TeamRetro.

For retrospectives, you have the choice of different

Retro Templates 

• Start/Stop/Continue
• What went well?/What went less well?/What do we want to try next?/What puzzles us?
• Mad/Sad/Glad
• Must/Should/Could/Won't
• Start/More of/Continue/Less of/Stop
• Future considerations/Lessons learned/Accomplishments/Problem areas
• Keep/Add/Less/More
• ...

You can also perform team health checks, I really like these, especially when you look at the evolution/trend over time:

Remote Team Happiness

• Role Clarity
• Autonomy
• Impact
• Engagement
• Support
• Connectedness
• Psychological Safety
• Personal Well-being

Team Health Check

• Ownership
• Value
• Goal Alignment
• Communication
• Team Roles
• Velocity
• Support and Resources
• Process
• Fun

[Nikki Zavadska [Appfire]]

Aww thanks @Amanda Barber !

@Dave Mathijs these are some really cool templates! I'll check the app for sure 👀

When it comes to frequency it really depends on your team (we're doing retros once a month and seems to be just right)

[Bill Sheboy]

Thanks for the topic and sharing your example, @Nikki Zavadska [Appfire] Your board reminds me of many of the physical and Miro board retros I have used, including Sailboat.

As a facilitator and participant in retrospectives since the early 80s, I have used lots of different methods, some better and some worser ;^)

With my most-recent teams, we did them at a variety of scales, cadences, and purposes:

• after each team mobbing session, twice a day
• after each team iteration, every 2 weeks
• after each phase of a major initiative, spanning multiple teams and organizations
• once per year, for a team alignment, purpose, and practice refresh
• just-in-time after challenge-resolution, using various root cause analysis (RCA) methods
• just-in-time after a conversation, presentation, training sessions, etc.
• and don't forget the meta one: retro-the-retro

I have a rep of using many different methods, which I find helps keep things interesting and valuable to people and teams.  Some keys for me are:

• ensure there is trust and safety before proceeding; if not, work on those with the team
• for larger sessions, and / or with people who do not work frequently together, create a working agreement for the session
• ensure there is a purpose for each thing done in a retro
• have a plan in mind and be prepared to adjust your plans
• ask for help when you need it.

And if you are looking for a different approach to try, consider Twitterspective, which is a social media-like one, gathering all team member feedback on each person's ideas prior to discussion.  It is a variation of Pass The Cards.  Lots of these can be found online or in many of the books written on facilitating conversations.

Kind regards,
Bill

[Barbara Szczesniak]

We have 3-week sprints and do a retro on the last day of every sprint. Sometimes I think this is too often, but we start with what was bad and ideas to address the issues, and sometimes we run out of time before we make it all the way through what went well.

[Alex G]

I use EasyRetro for my projects, I'll definitely try the Sailboat technique! 😃 

[Vronik]

Retrospectives are necessary, essential and we try to do them at least every three weeks to be able to know how everything is going and have time to solve something if necessary and enhance everything that is already working well.