Instructions
For this retrospective, the acting scrum master went around and just asked each person what they wanted to talk about. Everyone can pick whatever they want, whether it was something that went well or could have gone better, but they have to pick the single most important topic they want to discuss. During the conversation, everyone should write down what they are hearing and things they would want to discuss again. At the end of the meeting, everyone should email out their observations to the rest of the team.
How It Went
One of the biggest problems that our team generally runs into with retros is running out of time and discussing mostly surface level topics. This discussion format allowed us to focus in on one topic at a time with everyone involved and participating, knowing that they will get a chance to talk about their most important topic.
What It Did
This retro puts the discussion first. In a typical retro, we spend 10-15 minutes upfront creating long list of points to add and then basically just go around reading all the listed items without much discussion. Instead of an activity where people write up several ideas and thoughts, this gave everyone the opportunity to talk about the single most important issue that they ran into during the sprint. This format allowed us to have a deeper discussion about the things that affected the sprint and our ability to do our work.
What Could Have Gone Better
At the end of the activity, the acting Scrum Master emailed out his list and no one else did. I think it would be a good idea to make sure that everyone understands that they should be creating their list during the activity, an expectation of when they need to email the results, and what will be done with the list once it is compiled. This was everyone’s first experience with this format, and I think going forward it will be easier to understand and follow.
