Agile Retrospectives

3.1 Managing Activities

Every retrospective design includes activities—such as creating working agreements, building a timeline, brainstorming, and prioritizing—to help the team think together. You’ll need to introduce each activity, monitor the room during the activity, and debrief the activity when it’s done.

Most people want to know something about the purpose of an activity before they begin. Give a broad sense of the territory the team will explore without revealing the details of what will happen or specifying what the team will learn.

Tip 5:   Introducing Activities

The first time you use an activity, write a script so that you remember what to say and don’t garble the instructions or leave something out.

Once you have your script, practice saying it aloud. Saying the words is different from reading them or thinking them. As you hear yourself give the instruction, you’ll notice where you stumble and where even you can’t follow the instructions. Then you can refine your script and practice again.

You may not follow the script in the end, but preparing and practicing will help you describe the activity clearly and concisely.

Here’s an introduction for an activity to re-create the timeline of a release: “To understand our iteration we need to tell the whole story from everyone’s perspective. We’ll create a timeline that shows events that happened during the project. After we have a timeline as complete as it can be for now, we’ll look for interesting patterns and ...