This future-spective was an exercise where we imagined that we had achieved our goals and then made a plan to ensure that we meet the goals we set for ourselves. The sprint review before we starting a partnership with a third-party, I was hoping to run a different kind of exercise to align on our goals for the new partnership and discuss what kind of things might derail us from our plans.
Instructions
I emailed this activity out early to everyone that was going to participate and asked them to fill out their answers beforehand. The meeting started by explaining the purpose of the exercise to gain alignment on where we want to end up 90 days out. Everyone added their post its about what they were most excited about, and then dot voted on which items to discuss. The last step was to assume that we made it to the destination that we had agreed on and discuss how we got there and what we can do to ensure that. The second part of this exercise would be to meet again when the 90 days passed and see how close we came to the plan and what risks were avoided because we had planned for them.
How It Went
The meeting before this retro ran long and so we only had 45 minutes, which was not nearly enough time to get through this whole activity. The limited amount of time meant that we were only able to get through the first step talking about what everyone was most excited about. We did have some topics people were excited to have done in the 90 day forecast that had never been discussed before. Although it was a surprise, it lead to some interesting discussions. Since this was a different kind of activity and it took a little longer to get people in the right mindset to participate.
What It Did
This exposed some new priorities that people wanted done that had never been discussed in any of the other prioritization meetings. It helped us brainstorm some ideas about what we might need to look out for as we move forward. The most important thing this did was to be able to get us thinking of where we would be going and shifted everyone’s mindset about looking forward to our new partnership.
What Could Have Gone Better
It might have been better to have all the answers pre-assembled before the meeting so we could start with the voting directly or start with the limited topics. Or depending on whether you think it’s more important to think about risks, you could have people answer all of the questions including what to look out for before the meeting as well.
