In my native language, we have a saying: ‘EEN EZEL STOOT ZICH GEEN TWEEMAAL AAN DEZELFDE STEEN!‘ Loosely translated it means:  ‘A donkey doesn’t trip twice over the same rock.’

So basically, you are an idiot if you make the same mistake twice. In real life, planet earth seems to be populated with idiots and I must admit, on occasion, I am one of them.

Why? Cause we don’t take the time to stop and look around to see what rock actually made us trip. Or we just assume tripping is part of our natural behaviour. Or we know the rocks that make us trip, we know they shouldn’t be there but we accept that there is nothing we can do. Or maybe we are even to scared to look if there are any other paths that would allow us to avoid the rocks? There are so many other variants that stop us from making the same mistakes twice and ultimately, stop us from improving.

So that is why we have retro’s. A brief moment to stand still, look at what went well, what didn’t go that well. There are 2 parts: Identify (inspect) and plan to improve (adapt) – tip: develop your own personal retro. I do that all the time, take some time to just sit and ask myself the questions what I like about my behaviour, where I can improve,…

There are plenty of techniques out there and different ways to get to the same result. At the moment, with my current team I use a technique that the previous scrum master used and I added in: start, stop, continue.

The retro’s are good at the moment, our team has gotten used to them and is slowly understanding the value of surfacing issues in a diplomatic way. Hopefully in the future, we will reach a level where we don’t even need diplomacy any more, just respect, but at the moment, we aren’t there yet. So what does the retro look like? Every one gathers in the meeting room, they can sit, stand, walk around, whatever is comfortable. And we start by asking every one to give us 2 words of what they felt last sprint. To give some examples, sometimes words like these surface: ‘lots of fun’ (yes 3 words, but I’m flexible with the number 😉 or ‘very bored’ or ‘cautiously optimistic’. I write them on the board, in a mind map with the initials next to them of who said what. – the reason I use mindmap is: I want my team to understand the value of approaching emotions or concepts in an analytical way. This mindmap will usually be on the left side of the board.

Once I have gotten the words, I draw a table on the right side of the board:  start, stop, continue this will lead to the conclusions. Showing the team that what they analyse immediately reflects into valuable improvement areas.

Then I go back to the left side and pick one member out and get them to explain more in detail what their words mean. It’s great fun, wherever we can, we keep it light, even when the words are more loaded, because it is important to show that we are looking at problems that people have, the problems are the issue, not the people.

Retro’s are fun, why? Neuroscience has given us enough info to know what fun does to our brain, eliminates stress, actually grows neurons, bottom line, makes us smarter in the most efficient way. We come out of a retro energized, even if we tackled hard topics.

I usually also embed some coaching in my retro’s where I need to, you plant the seeds, the team runs with it and you see the individuals improve!

Don’t get me wrong, retro’s are in my opinion the hardest, it requires a lot of skills to see what approach to take to get the best out of your team and what approach to take towards every individual. Because I have rarely seen teams that are on the same level of experience, maturity,…

But, they are the most valuable, THIS is where you IMPROVE, add tremendous value to the business ( improve process, individual and team)… if you do it right.

Now go out and play!!!

🙂

PS: If you want to know about other techniques, look up 4L, play boat, mad sal glad, quartering, silent writing (if you need help with establishing safety),…