Retrospective in a Kanban team

An example 2012, September 12th

Søren WeissAgile CoachTwitter: @sorenweiss

Background

• The presentation serves to share an agenda which can be used to facilitate a retrospective in a scrum team or in a kanban team.

• I facilitated the retrospective with a Danish kanban team (9 team members) in September 2012.

• The team had implemented Kanban in June 2012.

• The team members were working in a maintenance/project organisation and were all highly skilled specialists.

• Duration of the session was 1 hour.

Retrospective agenda

• Set the scene

• Commitment exercise

• "Actions for Retrospective" game

• Chose the retrospective

Set the scene

• I shared with the team my experiences on what makes a good retrospective meeting by presenting 5 essentiel elements

1. Time

2. Focus

3. Reflection

4. Responsibility

5. Variation

5 elements for the good retrospective

1. Time, invest sufficient time for the meeting. I often see that too little time is invested in a retrospective meeting. This typically leads to teams that jump to conclusion and actions of poor quality.

2. Focus, set optimal conditions for the meeting. I often see team doing retrospective meetings in their teamroom with phones ringing, collegues dropping by and other interruptions.

3. Reflection, be aware that the retrospective is a space for reflection. I often see that teammembers misunderstand to be only a social event rather than a "working meeting" with focus on reflection. It takes brain power to reflect efficiently - and that should not be forgot.

4. Responsibility, the participants of the retrospective are the ones generating the insights and drawing, drawing the conclusions and setting new goals. This takes a team with teammembers feeling responsible for they own participation and also for the participation of the whole team. I sometimes meet teammembers who think that "the other teammembers" will do the job.

5. Varation, it is crucial for the success of the retrospective that the format of the meeting varies over time. I sometimes meet teams, who have become less motivated to do retrospectives, because there are no surprises in the way the meeting is conducted and facilitated.

Commitment exercise

The team members form a circle. One person reaches out with one arm and tells the other teammembers what he/she will contribute with during the retrospective. Everybody makes eye contact and nods to appreciate this. Then another person reaches out placing a hand on the first hand and shares what he/she will contribute with. This continues untill everybody has committed to contribute with something for the meeting. Often the team ends the exercise by yelling out "go" or some other "battle cry". This typically results in a strong feeling of commitment for the individuals as well as for the whole team. I consider this exercise a "quality assurance" element for the meeting.

"Actions for Retrospective" game

The retrospective was set for only 60 minutes. As a facilitator I needed to combine the stages of the retrospective in order to comply with time. I choose to use the "Actions for Retrospective" game. One advantage of that exercise is that "Gather data", "Generate insights" and "Draw conclusions" are done within the same exercise.

1. The team formed into two groups reflecting on

1. Puzzles, questions for which they have no answer.

2. Risks, future pitfalls that can endanger the project.

3. Appreciations, what they liked during the previous iteration.

4. Wishes, ideas of the ideal project (not improvements!)

2. Because of the time limit I stressed that each group could only bring one item per category. The two groups presented their input by placing post it notes on the matrix. During this part of the session I strongly emphasised that the other teammembers took notes which would serve as input for the later "Draw conclusions" phase.

3. After presenting all items the team decided on the most important action. I assisted the team in securing that the action was S.M.A.R.T. Furthermore a "guardian angel" was appointed for the action.

4. The team managed to decide on two actions for the next iteration.

"Actions for Retrospective" game based on Nick Ostvoegel's "Actions centered"

Twitter: @sorenweiss