Retros are useful for all sorts of projects and teams! How can you start facilitating them today?
Here’s an easy overview of how I facilitate retros.
First…when do you do them? At the end of a project, a retro is a good time to gather lessons learned and document successes and areas for improvement. For a functional team, a retro at the end of each quarter is helpful as a check-in, and a chance for the team to improve future performance.
An hour is probably good for less than ten people, but for more than that you may need 90 minutes.
The basic steps are:
- Collect feedback anonymously
- Organize and group the comments
- Vote on the most significant items
- Discuss and agree on action items and takeaways
Visually, it’s helpful to have some sort of white board, digitally or in person.
There are loads of premade templates out there on websites such as Atlassian, Miro, and Metro Retro. Poke around examples for inspiration.
I use Azure DevOps because I can create work items and smoothly link them to our features without having to jump back and forth between platforms.
For a fun twist, my team does a theme for each retro. For example, in our Florida Man retro, instead of the prompt “What were your biggest blockers” I asked “What didn’t go well, like trying to outrun a gator in the Everglades?
Here are some of the themes we have done in the last year:
- Hot Sauces
- Road Trippin’
- Lord of the Rings
- Florida Man
My role as facilitator is to remain neutral, make sure everyone’s voice is heard, and synthesize the conversation. I also feedback broad strokes to leadership without violating the anonymity of my peers.
If you don’t facilitate retros on a regular cadence, what are you waiting for?
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