Evolving Retrospectives: Applying Themes
This week I got to have someone from another team who has been taking part in our “retrospective facilitators” group facilitate my team’s retrospective. He had started out using the framework from the Agile Retrospectives book and with a little help from me, but this week I got to see how he had evolved the format in a way I didn’t expect.
What he had done was apply a theme to the activities that made them fun and coherent. He used a news paper/reporting theme with the following structure:
- Set Up: Paint the Iteration
- Gather Data: Iteration Headlines
- Generate Insight: Investigative Reporting
- Decide What To Do: Read All About It
- Wrap Up: Plus / Delta
I was throughly impressed… the format was fun and enjoyable yet still tied back in a kind of abstract way to the activities outlined in the Agile Retrospective book. One of his teammates also told me about one retrospective where he used a CSI theme… hehehe. I must say… it’s always a great feeling when you teach someone something, then later they teach you. 
So today I decided to try
So today I tried something along similar lines… using a car theme. The iteration started with asking participants what kind of car they would use to describe the iteration. Then, transparently moving into the gather data phase, ask them why they chose that car. From here, we did the Learning Matrix, but with a twist… rather than Things to Keep, Things to Change, Ideas, and Praise, we used Showroom, Junkyard, Research and Development, and Car and Driver Awards.
From these two retrospectives I’ve found that applying a theme seems to open up participation more… people chuckle a bit and seem to be more relaxed. Best of all, it’s fun dreaming up new themes and keeps people throughly entertained… and it’s hard to get bored with the activities because they’re always approached differently, giving them a fresh feel.
Just a reminder… it seems to be best to send out a small agenda of the activities before hand so people have time to think about something to describe the iteration with. I tried a Pirate theme on Talk Like a Pirate Day without some advance notice and everyone was a bit confused on how exactly a pirate would describe the iteration. Unfortunately no one stated that they “Plunder’d dem storahs” that iteration.
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