Retrospective activity: Happiness radar

This activity is very useful for narrowing down the retrospective conversation.

I find it especially useful for helping the team mapping feelings into data points.

How to run it:

1. Create the voting canvas

	people	technology	process
:)
:|
:(

2. Ask people to give one vote on each section (people, process, technology);

3. Decide upon the next retrospective activity (based on the Happiness radar)

Below is a sample photo from a retrospective where I used the happines radar activity.

And here is the photo from the activity to follow. Please note that the activity to follow focused into answering the questions: What will increase the happiness?

The two colors of notes where for technology and process. I have selected these based on the happinees radar score.

Retrospective: understand perceived facts before reasoning

Reasoning is the core activity for a retrospective. But it is important for a group to have a common ground on what they are reasoning about. The group has to first look at facts and perceptions.

All argument and reasoning must be based upon certain perceptions. Without these, there cannot be any argument. Reasoning is the method of comparison between certain facts which the group has already perceived. If these perceived facts are not there already, there cannot be any reasoning.

When planning a retrospective, choose an activity to help the team uncover facts. Facts help the group understand perceptions, and upon that the group will be ready to engage into reasoning.

Timeline activity for retrospective

Below is a deck for a timeline activity I used on my last retrospective.

Timeline activity

View more presentations from paulocaroli.

Previously I have used this approach for a collocated retrospective. I would draw a timeline on a white board, create 4 areas on the board (people, process, tools/technology, and other), and use two colors of notes (well – green /not so well - gray) to start with, followed by a third color for action items (yellow).

Here is the snapshot of the retrospective activity (this picture was generated by Google Drawing):

A good lightweight recognition exercise for your next Retrospective: tokens of appreciation

Today I read a blog entry which reminded me about a good lightweight exercise I have used in Agile retrospectives very for recognizing and fostering team collaboration.

It is called the token of appreciation. Here is how it works:

1. Bring a chocolate box to the retrospective
2. Ask people to form a circle.
3. You can start as a facilitator by saying: “I would like to give a chocolate for NAME as a recognition on that time when he/she helped me with…
4. Then you give the chocolate box to that person and ask him to repeat the gesture.

I found this exercise especially useful for end of projects or end of release exercise. The participants usually enjoy it and talk in a positive way about the good things their teammates did and how they appreciate it.

This blog entry about IGN describes another implementation of the same idea: token of appreciation for for recognition. A big difference is that the tokens are not eatable and translate to money. I am interested to hear the drawbacks of this as a bonus policy and alternatives to it.

Facilitation exercise – Triangle forming for self-organizing team

This exercise is to be used for fostering the conversation about self-organization

Given a group of people multiple of 3 (12 for example), the facilitator will run a similar activity twice.

First run:

The facilitator asks the group to walk (individually) in a random direction

When the facilitator says the magic word “triangle”, each group member has to find other 2 people and from an equilateral triangle (each person is a triangle vertices, and should point each arm toward the other two people representing the other triangle vertices; each person is a triangle vertice on one triangle only).

The facilitator takes the time of how long it took the group to from the triangles.

Second run

The facilitator selects one person to be the group triangle organizer.

The facilitator asks the group to walk in a random direction

When the facilitator says the magic word “triangle”, the group triangle organizer has to form equilateral triangles with all group members (including himself in one of the triangles).

The facilitator takes the time of how long it took the group to form the triangles.

Conversation to follow

The first run shows a self organizing group; the second run show a group guided by one organizer (the group triangle organizer).

Typically, the self-organizing triangle formation runs faster than its counterpart, and the team feel more engaged on the activity.

I find this activity very useful for starting a conversation about self organizing teams.

I learned this activity from Heitor Roriz, a friend and Scrum coach and trainer from one of his trainings. Kudos to him for applying a fun activity for fostering the conversation about an essential concept of successful agile teams: self-organization.