One of the founding members of our team was leaving and I wanted to find a way to both honor his time and commitment to the team but also try to reduce some of the fear and anxiety we all felt with his departure. For this activity, we had all the members of the extended team send in the skills and knowledge that he brought to the team and then discussed what we could do to make sure that we were able to make up those skills when he was gone.
Instructions
Email everyone that will be participating in the retrospective to send a list of strengths and skills that the departing teammate brought before the actual event. It is helpful to include at least one example to get their responses started. Once you receive everyone’s responses, organize them into different categories. Then create a second chart with those categories to discuss how you can continue to retain those skills.
During the retro, start with discussing how the responses fit into the categories that you created. Let everyone read the responses on their own. Then move onto the second part, which is what the team can do to keep those skills or develop them on our own. We did this by coming to a consensus on the solution/suggestion before filling it into the chart.
How It Went
To this day, this is one of my favorite retros that I have ever been a part of. Instead of being a series of sad goodbyes and fear of how we would make it without his knowledge set, we were able to say very nice things about him (without having to say them out loud) and turn it into not just a happy event, but also actionable takeaways. We had an energetic conversation with more participation than most retros. I didn’t realize just how helpful it was to get the departing developer’s suggestions and ideas about how he had approached some of these situations and how he approached some of these things. He was also very surprised because I had not told him that we would be doing this as the retro and left him off all the emails.
What It Did
This helped us identify the skills and talents that we were losing from our team but also allowed us to highlight how we could build on what we already had. We were able to see the areas where we would need to step up and make a conscious decision to pick up some of the skills we were losing. It allowed us to thank him for the time and energy that he put into the team, while at the same time knowing that it would be okay and we could build on what we already have.
How It Could Have Gone Better
Send a quick reminder to the people that still had not send their responses and it will help funnel in a few extra responses. Trying to narrow the responses into categories was one of the most difficult parts so make sure to give yourself some time to organize the responses out. I would also suggest adding an “Other” category for the new skills sheet. There were some extra ideas about what we would need to do as a team that did not fit into the predefined options and it would have been nice to have an extra space to capture those as well.
