Reinvigorate your retrospectives for health, happiness and ROI
Are your retros stale? Is your team phoning it in, secretly dreading the notification and looking for any excuse to decline?
Whether it’s the end of the week, the end of an iteration, or just time to get some feedback, retrospectives are a common practice in our industry. Many of us are so used to these reoccurring meetings, that we rarely give them a second thought. If that’s the case for you, then it’s time to ask yourself if these important team ceremonies are serving you in a valuable way.
Retros are a key ingredient in continuous improvement, effective communication and team health. If they’re not working for you, then it’s time they do. In this article I’ll discuss why we retro, what to avoid, signs that something’s wrong and tips for team health, happiness and retro ROI.
Why we have retrospectives
In discussing this topic over the years with many colleagues, common themes continue to emerge.
- Discuss how things well, stop, change strategy. Small adjustments to improve.
- Get on the same page, converge on cadence following weeks.
- Feedback loop / Learn / Refactor
- Empathy with other roles
- Psychological Safety. Say what you feel.
- Minimize risk — surface issues early
- Encourages transparency on the team
- Develop safety / Team bonding
- Create action items to apply following week
- Encourages self-reflection
- Share things we’ve learned
- Decompress / Celebrate wins / Mourn losses
These themes break down into 3 clear outcomes — all that happen to include a “C”.
The 3 C’s
Continuous Improvement, Communication, Connection
1. Continuous Improvement
Retrospectives are a the nucleus of Agile software development. At its simplest, Agile is continuous incremental improvement through small and frequent releases. Everything we do — from the way we structure our teams, to the meetings we allow on our calendars — contributes to this ideology.
Retrospectives are an intentional space to ensure we’re not just making incremental improvements individually, but as a team. Feedback early and often underpins the core purpose of a retrospective, ensuring we consistently take the time to make small adjustments to improve overtime.
The definition of retrospective is, “looking back on or dealing with past events or situations.” As obvious as it seems, retrospectives are place to reflect on recent events and — using the power of your collective minds — to improve the next time around.
Even if things are generally good, there’s always room to improve.
2. Honest Communication
The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
Retros create a space for sharing what you‘ve learned, or gut-checking new assumptions you’re running with. Additionally, retros are a space to share what you’re struggling with, helping others empathize with your role and vice versa. Sharing thoughts early can often result in finding quickly finding the solution or the support that never occurred to you.
Being honest about how things are going allows issues to surface early, rather than festering into bad situations. Honesty is one of the hardest things for a team to master but — in my opinion — the biggest factor to great products. People work best when they feel they can contribute their thoughts and opinions safely and without fear of retribution.
3. Human Connection
Retrospectives are just one way to invest in people. We’re not cogs in a some software building machine after all, we’re humans.
Humans are emotional and desire connection. A strongly connected team results in a more pleasurable work day and and overall better quality of life for people.
Retrospectives provide an intentional space for catharsis, “the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.” Opportunities to decompress, give accolades, or simply vent are increasingly harder to come by in a remote first world making retros a critical support to emotional health and human connection.
Simple things to avoid
In order to achieve The 3 C’s — continuous improvement, honest communication, and human connection — there are some simple things to avoid during the meeting.
What to avoid in ream retros
- One person talking the whole time
- Complaining with no proactive suggestions
- Calling someone out
- Spending to long on one topic
- Just venting without actions
- Stakeholders and people who threaten the “safety” in the meeting
- Assigning blame to an individual — focus on what to do better
- Negative feedback — something that should be one-on-one
The retro facilitator
For retrospectives, a facilitator is key to achieving The 3 C’s. The job of a facilitator is to get the team from point A to point B, steering the team towards valuable conversation and away from the those “things to avoid”. Keep the following in mind when facilitating your team retrospectives.
- Keep us on track
- Keep us on time
- Make sure all voices get heard / be a remote advocate
- Promote the creation of action items
- Keep the meeting positive / productive
Retro Red Flags
In addition to promoting team health through continuous improvement, communication and connection, retrospectives can signal that your team health isn’t where it could be.
Signs that your team health… well… sucks
Watch for the following signals that indicate poor team health. I’ll dive into tips to improve in the following sections.
Cameras are off
If no one’s on camera, it’s a tell tale sign of poor team health. This is a remote problem, but increasingly relevant as the industry moves toward remote work.
Who wants to communicate open and honestly to a screen full of empty rectangles? There’s no body language to feed off of, no indication that anyone cares or is even paying attention.
As a consultant, I’ve personally facilitated retros with a cameras off team. Each each time was an unpleasant and unnerving experience. Cameras off is a red flag.
There’s no back and forth
Bueller?
Do your retrospectives make you think of Farris Bueller’s Day Off? Are people sharing their sticky notes to a wall of silence? If there’s no actual conversation in your retros, no back and forth, and no questions being asked, it’s a bad sign.
It may be that the items being shared aren’t worth conversation, or it may be that the team is not interested in contributing their thoughts with improvement in mind. Either way, it’s evidence that somethings not right on the team.
It’s all surface level
Another signal that the team isn’t functioning to its full potential is surface level retro items. This is the filler stuff, things unrelated to the project or only comments that make things look good. If there are no challenges being brought up by the team, it’s likely not that there aren’t any.
It may be the team doesn’t feel safe, isn’t clear on the mission, or is not focused on high priority problems. Whatever the case may be, surface level items are are a red flag that something deeper is going on.
Action items are a rare occurrence
Lastly, if actions items rarely get captured, or sit in the uncompleted state week after week, it’s signal that your team can do better. Not every retro has to result in groundbreaking action items, but if your recent retros have not resulted in any process improvements, it’s a smell you shouldn’t ignore.
Reinvigorating Retros
Tips for health, happiness, and ROI
Sometime’s retros just need a little switch up. Try switching up your retrospectives with one or more of these suggestions.
Switch up your retro items
It can be difficult to recall things in the moment when the retro timer starts counting down. To help, try capturing items in real time during the week. Keep a notebook or digital notepad on hand so you can write things down when they come up. Reference your goals for the week, your calendar, or larger team goals and outcomes for ideas as well.
Ask for feedback about something specific like a recent workshop you lead or an assumption you’re working through. Try asking for ideas on what could be improved or ways to make it more valuable next time.
Asking open ended questions is another valuable way to stimulate conversation. You might ask how people feel about recent stakeholder feedback or whether they feel the team is focused on the right priorities.
Switch up the venue
A retro should be casual and comfortable. If it’s not, try switching up the venue. If your meetings are in person, go outside or offsite to change up the vibe. In a remote world, this can be more challenging. Try theming the retro with video background images of pets or beach vacations.
Snacks and beverages can easily shift a stuffy meeting into something more celebratory. Offering libations (in moderation of course) can take the edge off of a long day. For remote meetings, invite people to take a break before the meeting to grab a beverage or a snack.
The time of day can be a factor as well. Trying switching up the time to when people are most ready to decompress.
Switch up the format
Try a different retro format to stimulate some different ways of thinking. There are many formats available online to choose from to liven things up, or try creating your own. This particular article, 18 Types of Ideas for Sprint Retrospective Formats has — you guessed it — 18 formats to try!
With The 3 C’s in mind, you can also try something other than a full team meeting. Feedback one-on-ones or speedback feedback can accomplish the same goals as a retro and may be a breath of fresh air to break up the monotony.
Switch up the prompts
The prompts you use can change the content the the retro drastically. Specific prompts can help to get peoples juices flowing in the right direction.
Try “Ideas for improving our ________ process” or “What I’d do differently if I could do it again”.
You can also rotate the facilitator so people get a different version each week. Not only does it keep things interesting, but facilitating a team retro is a great entry point for anyone looking to sharpen their facilitation skills.
Switch up the timing
Maybe your team is communicating so well that weekly retros are overkill. Try a bi-weekly retro to see if people are more mentally prepared. Just don’t let too much time slip by between reflection.
Try a shorter or longer meeting to see if things improve. Remember, when the goal is accomplished, the meeting can end. Don’t run out the clock just because the meeting was scheduled for a specific time block. Never go overtime, instead, schedule a follow-up. People will start to dread any meeting if they don’t know when it will end.
Switch up the meeting invite list
This one is important. Consider if the people in your retro should actually be there. The people in a retro should all be focused on the same goals and everyone should be able to contribute comfortably. It really shouldn’t be more than 10–15 people.
The group should feel comfortable sharing failures or personal growth goals without fear of detriment to their career. People that evaluate performance or stakeholders need not apply. Get them off the list and find a different format for their involvement.
Reinvigorating Retros
Reset the tone
Make sure everyone evolved understand the purpose of a retrospective. Have an open discussion about goals and what to avoid. I’ve often included the prime directive in reset discussions to establish a common mindset.
The purpose of the Prime Directive is to assure that a retrospective has the right culture to make it a positive and result oriented event. It helps a retrospective become a tool to learn, find solutions, and to improve together.
Share the prime directive with your team to set the stage for your retrospectives and the discussions within them.
The Prime Directive
“Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.”
Going Deeper
If reinvigorating your retros isn’t making the difference you’re hoping for, the problem is likely deeper than the retro itself.
A bad retro is a symptom of a deeper underlying condition… and that’s okay
It may be that the your team doesn’t feel safe being open and honest with each other. In that case, focus your efforts on team building. Try some one-on-ones or schedule a team game time to build connections. Do what works best for your team to build trust.
It may be that the mission of the project is unclear or the team is focused on low priority work. In that case, focus on articulating a valuable near team outcome, collaboration, and roadmap alignment.
Whatever the case, when retros aren’t working — don’t worry — you’ve just discovered an opportunity for continuous improvement, honest communication, and human connection. Work with your team to pinpoint the root cause, work together on incremental improvements, and discuss your progress together in your next, reinvigorated, retrospective.
