These techniques allow you to create a safer environment because it is set in scene, the team become actors and artists that voice their concerns and opinions through a medium without exposing their sometimes vulnerable selves.

It’s good to jazz things up sometimes, so I decided to do a little experiment with our team. Experiments are good, they are the basis for advancement.

retro technique

We use a big boardroom for our retro’s, with 2 massive boards on the wall. So I asked every member to go up to the board and draw a boat. The boat has to represent themselves, no other direction was given. ( a variation on a known retro technique)

It was fascinating to see the result. Most ships looked very similar, with sails and a mast, some had people on deck, some were just the ship and then there are the creative exceptions, massive battleships with guns and enough room to land a few F-14’s.

The drawings reflect a lot of the artists personality and skills, so it gives you great insight about underlying personality traits, ambitions, potential issues and insecurities, but I am not yet going to go into that detail in this post.

Step 2 was for every one to put their name on the boat, emphasising once again that this boat represents them as a person in the whole setting of this sprint.

Step 3 was to draw anchors. Each anchor representing something that is slowing them down, the size of the anchor represents the importance.

One observation is that this technique allowed people to be more open about personal challenges within the sprint. Identifying through the boat made it easier to open up as there is an object that protects you. It was also fun for the team to try something different.

In addition to the individual boat drawings, we added another experiment. A suggestion for improvement came up but there was some pro/con within the team. So we decided to try out a debate.

You know the traditional debate teams in college where one is pro and the other is con, this is what we did. One person was elected to represent pro, another to represent con and the rest of the team where the jury. Drawback was that it was time consuming, pro was that as a team we got to safely challenge each others beliefs and look at everything objectively. Again it created a safer way to deal with challenges. I will definitely be using this technique again as even the more quiet members of the team voiced their point of view through this technique and didn’t feel insecure when their ideas were challenged because it was all part of the exercise.

These techniques allow you to create a safer environment because it is set in scene, the team become actors and artists that voice their concerns and opinions through a medium without exposing their sometimes vulnerable selves.

Thanks,

Brigitte