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The intersection of technology and leadership

Category: Retrospective (Page 5 of 5)

When Retrospectives Go Wrong: The Facilitator Controls the Retrospective

October 16, 2007 / / 0 Comments

I participated in one retrospective run by a contract Project Manager whose style was to stand in front of the group, and ask individuals one by one for a single idea for a “What Went Well”, “What Went Less Well” wall. I felt horrified as I saw each person uncomfortably offer a very brief statement, or in general, skip their turn and all with little discussion around it.

I look back at that situation and guess that it wouldn’t have been so bad if the team already had trust and confidence in the facilitator, but it was obvious from my perspective, based on the lack of interaction and productive conversations, this retrospective offered little value.

Strategies that I would employ (and some that I did) to improve the situation include using an independent facilitator (with no vested interest) to run the retrospective, collate input using sticky-notes to improve anonymity and efficiency, and to spend more time, drawing out the story behind the items to identify any common root causes.

When Retrospectives Go Wrong

October 16, 2007 / / 3 Comments

Some people think that I’m a little bit crazy about how passionate I can be when it comes to retrospectives. I feel it’s an important event for organisations, teams, and individuals to reflect and adapt the things that they’re doing. I find it really strange, if not slightly contradictory when people, who enjoy practising agile, don’t necessarily believe in the value of retrospectives (but I don’t want to detail that thought just yet).

This week I’ve been fortunate enough to share, with my class, my passion for retrospectives and only had enough time to skim through all the ways that you can use them. What I unfortunately didn’t have enough time to cover was the ways that retrospectives may go wrong and, therefore, not be particularly useful for people.

When people misuse or misapply a particular tool, the people involved can, understandably, jump to the conclusion that the tool itself is terrible and a great waste of time. More often than not, I feel those people have shut their mind far too early, and don’t have enough of a chance to understand the contexts in which that tool may bring the greatest value. Sure, I’ve been through, and probably even hosted, quite a few ineffective retrospectives myself, but it doesn’t mean that the retrospective tool doesn’t offer any value.

To fill the gap that I missed with my students, I’m at least hoping to share with them (and everyone else on the web), my understanding about when retrospectives can go wrong.

Free Running Reflection: A Personal Retrospective Technique

July 28, 2007 / / 2 Comments

Anyone who has worked with me knows how crazy I am about Retrospectives for the workplace. I apply similar techniques when it comes to organising my personal life so I thought I’d share one technique I use that I call “Free Running Reflection”.

I adapted this technique from a “free-writing” class that clieu took a while back. I’ve found it especially effective for getting all those niggling things out of my head and in a place that I can see them and focus on doing something about them. It’s also been very useful under extreme times of stress, showing me things that may be unconsciously influencing my thinking.

Free Running Reflection

I use four very simple things to run this exercise: 15 minutes of time, a timer (watch, stopwatch, clock, etc) a pen and access to plenty of paper to write on. I normally carry around a small notebook (previously a Moleskin, and currently a great little Ciak one).

Here’s how I run it:

  • Choose a time boxed period – I usually use 5 or 10 minutes depending on how much time I have.
  • Start the timer and write down everything in your head on to the paper until the time runs out. Put down absolutely anything and everything that crosses your mind. A word, a phrase, a full sentence, and especially all random thoughts. I generally avoid pictures though sometimes draw small diagrams if it’s faster than writing a sentence. If you do draw diagrams be careful to keep them as simple as possible as the goal is to get everything going through your head down as soon as possible during the time period.
  • With the remaining time, review what you’ve written down and see if there are common themes. Sometimes I draw lines between bits, or regroup items to help me discover patterns. Depending on how I’m feeling I will then decide if I want to do anything about the items on the list, and add the top three to my list of things to focus on and complete.

If you like this technique, or have any other recommendations, please leave a comment.

Asking for Feedback Today

June 30, 2007 / / 4 Comments

At Thoughtworks we run regular rounds of reviews (at least twice a year). We also try to collect project roll off reviews although collecting feedback at these points sometimes proves difficult as people move on to other projects. The last few rounds, I’ve used the list that Jason Yip wrote a while back here. It’s served me well on the most part, and thought it’s about time to review them to be slightly more relevant. Here’s the latest one I’m using for my current project.

  • How do you feel about how I’ve listened to you? Tried to understand you?
  • Did I provide you with enough guidance and support? Did I give you enough freedom? How would you describe my approach?
  • What things made it easy for you to work/pair program with me? What things made it hard to work/pair program with me? How do you think we could collaborate better?
  • In the role of a technical lead, do you think I was effective or ineffective? How could I become more effective in my role? What do you see as my greatest strengths? What do you see as my greatest weaknesses?
  • Describe how my style differs from other technical leads that you’ve worked with? What would you change? What would you keep?
  • What things have I done that have had a significant impact (positive and negative) on the project?
  • What areas do you think I can improve or grow in and why?

I’d be interested to see if you have any more that you ask yourself? If so, please leave a comment.

More Reflections on the 2007 Retrospective Facilitators Gathering

April 13, 2007 / / 2 Comments

I’ve had a few days pass since getting back from the Retrospective Facilitators Gathering and since I’ve been working on a new project haven’t had much time to reflect on the last half of the conference.

Here’s a condensed summary of notes I took:

  • Four and a half days of an open space conference is extremely exhausting, especially in the desert. I think it’s a great way of running the conference and since I am who I am, I feel like I need to attend all the interesting sessions (of which there was plenty) and contribute or take out a lot of it. I’m very glad the organisers planned a small break at the end of Wednesday afternoon to help relieve some of this pressure.
  • A retrospective facilitator’s toolkit can be minimal and at another end of the spectrum could easily fill an entire small suitcase with equipment that looks like an arts and craft or stationary store. Many that we listed include various types of tapes, various types and sizes of post-its, papers, cards, thinking toys, focus tools, food, tissue paper, pens, pencils, markers, dry erase, pins, hand cleaner, timers, and dots.
  • Open space events help people solve specific problems. One I attended that seems particularly relevant to me and many people I know was called “Avoiding Burnout (How to be energised by your passion and not drained by it)”.
Lutheran Retreat Centre in Carefree Arizona
  • Linda Rising’s quote: “You don’t get the thermometer out if you’re not sick”.
  • Even people in the retrospective community make mistakes but are amazingly quick at reflecting, applying themselves and learning from it. It’s a community that really eat’s their own dog food (and this is a good thing – follow the link if you don’t believe me).
  • Norm had a great story about how retrospectives and wisdom from their retrospectives are leveraged in the US Fire Fighting system. I found it fascinating how teams fighting fires hold reflections on how to improve their firefighting abilities while the US Fire Fighting Academy takes all those reflections, writes about them in journals, magazines and reports, teaches their students about the lessons learned from mistakes in the field, and lobby the government to influence and improve fire fighting standards.

I’ll get around to posting a final book list here sometime soon.

Current Reflections on the 2007 Retrospective Facilitators Gathering

April 5, 2007 / / 0 Comments

So it’s at the end of the second day that I’m writing about my experiences at the Retrospective Gathering. I hope that this entry not only helps me to distil my thoughts, realisations, affirmations and respect for different opinions but I hope it helps other people understand what retrospectives are, how important they can be and why there is an entire conference dedicated to it.

I’ve attended and participated in several conferences in the past, and the gathering I’ve been part of two days so far feels very different to others I’ve attended. Perhaps part of it has to do with the size (26 or so people), or perhaps it has to do with a group of people sharing a common passion helping each other to learn and grow. Either way, I feel it doesn’t matter that you’ve published (or not published) any books, it doesn’t matter the number of times that you’ve attended, and it doesn’t matter how you choose to participate, as it feels like a safe environment to share experiences and push each other’s learning comfort zone.

We are running this particular gathering using open space rules and despite the small number of participants we get quite a few different streams of so many different topics. I will post a link to the area where we are currently collating results.

Thinking Toys at the Retrospective Gathering

For me, even after only the second day, it has be a phenomenal learning experience. Despite everyone’s passions for the same thing, I’m fascinated how so many people found the role of retrospective facilitation through so many different paths. I think I’ve already come away with plenty of learnings that I will try to distil (so far) in the list below:

  • Training and coaching other retrospective facilitators actually requires lots of thought and preparation – sometimes people aren’t or will never be completely suitable for running them but it doesn’t mean they can’t contribute to a valuable session with other facilitators.
  • Despite my passion for the topics, I don’t think I’ve personally spent enough time promoting or encouraging retrospectives (or what I prefer to classify as continuous improvement at a company, team or individual level) in my company enough and I definitely will try more to when I get back.
  • I learned a heck a lot more about Temperature Readings and I think I’ve addressed a lot of my fears and concerns about not using it inappropriately.
  • Facilitating distributed retrospectives brings about a whole heap of its own obstacles and it’s good to have contributed to developing a toolkit for dealing with it.
  • Gut feel plays an important part of the way facilitators seem to make decisions – though best practices may exist, judgement about when things are used and not used is more important than sticking to “best practices”.

There’s some really interesting resources I’ve accumulated so far, and at the end I will certainly ensure the list is put in one place, but here’s some of the items I’ve got to look into right now:

  • Diffusion of Innovation
  • Non Violent Communication
  • The Elegant solution
  • Innovation Games
  • Corporate Cultural Survival Group
  • Managing at the speed of Change
  • Naming the Elephant
  • Focused Questions
  • New People Making
  • Fearless Change

As always if you have managed to get this far, I would enjoy hearing your feedback, thoughts, opinions and questions on anything I’ve written about so far.

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