Agile Retrospectives

Appendix 2 Debriefing Activities

The four-step debriefing method described in Chapter 3, ​Leading Retrospectives​ works in almost every situation. But just as activities wear out, so do debriefs. After a while, your team will recognize the order of the questions. They may even groan. So here are four other ways to debrief activities.

The One-Question Debrief    Ask, “What’s the first thing you want to say about this activity?”

Journal Debrief    If people on your team keep journals (which is a good idea for anyone who wants to become a better leader or team member), develop two or three questions, and give seven to ten minutes for people to answer the questions in their journals. When time is up, ask whether anyone has an insight he or she would share with the group. Depending on the topic, people may or may not choose to reveal what they’ve written.

Journal questions work for debriefing when the goal is personal reflection:

• “How would an outsider say you contribute to this situation?”

• “What’s one thing you personally can do to improve this situation?”

• “What’s one thing you will do differently in our next iteration?”

• “What is one change you can commit to in the next iteration?”

Question Pairs    Pick a pair of questions to encourage team members to talk about the activity. Question pairs might be as follows:

• What interesting things happened during this activity? What did you learn about yourself or your teammates?

• How was your experience in ...