I’ve been reflecting on my last 9 years on global remote teams and the elements of a learning culture.  Today, I’ll focus on retrospectives, “retros,” as we call them.  No matter your team’s delivery cadence or project methodology, a steady heartbeat of team retrospectives goes a long way in team learning and continuous improvement, personal T-shaped skill development, and team building.  This post is for anyone familiar with the concept of retros yet new to the practice who wants a little help getting started. 

This post offers an overview of how our global remote team typically ran retrospectives, what worked well, and a few anecdotes about the fun we had with how we operated them.  Though I share the mechanics we used every 2 weeks in what worked for our team, it is adaptable for your project context as to whether your team is on-site or hybrid. 

I also offer this template, which we used yet were not bound to. The approach outlined below helped get engineering and non-technical teams up and running and self-sustaining.  It’s been fun to watch teams take off, grow stronger together, and branch out, some eventually spreading their wings and favoring less structured formats in their retros.  You know it’s working when folks say, “I am looking forward to our retro tomorrow!”  

Simple, transparent, repeatable organization

We had a Slack channel specifically for retros. It’s where we posted the link to our retro board (Trello or Mural).  It is where we pinned instructions for the hosts-to-be on creating a new retro board, organized ourselves, and made it easy to see the outcomes; we noted or pasted a screenshot of action items.  We rotated hosts every sprint, so also pinned at the top of the channel was a list of who was on point to host and when.

And now, here’s your host

What was great about host rotations was how they grew the T-shaped skills and meeting facilitation skills.  It was up to the hosts to find a substitute or trade days with teammates if they would be out of the office on their designated. 

I might run the 1st retro or two for a new team.  Thereafter, I offered “behind the scenes” Slack help/pro-tips via direct message for new hosts if they wanted it.  For example, if one person was getting too much air time, if the conversation had stalled, if we were running over on a part of the agenda, or if the host needed to draw out a quiet voice gently.

Variations on a theme

One of the beauties of having rotating hosts was the fresh fun factor.   Personalities shined in new ways.  For example, hosts choose the Trello board background image, select a funny picture at the top of each column, choose a Mural template, and choose a variation of the format.  Variations on the format included options like More/Less/Same, Loved/Learned/Loathed or Longed For (my favorite), and Katrina Clokie’s “Remember the Future.”

Some courageous hosts deftly facilitated the meeting with a blank sheet of paper. , which came through with the rotation of hosts.  

Brave, focused space

As you see on the template provided, we always opened with the prime directive: “Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.” We all agreed to turn off cell phones & not look at Slack.  

Retro allowed people time to “get things off their chest” if needed.   There were often very “spirited” discussions.  We were all pushing pretty hard and having fun while doing it, but the retro time was also essential for us to decompress.  What happened in the retro stayed in the retro.  There was high trust.  

One of the most exciting things to me is how, in a brave and respectful space, the quiet voice can offer up a question, comment, or thought that completely shifts the direction of a conversation and an outcome.  It’s electric. 

Some retro guides suggest using anonymity to encourage participation. It was rare that I encountered this to be necessary or warranted.  Thankfully, it was only for a short while in a short-term transitional context where this was essential.  It’s not what I was used to. For your context, anonymity may be helpful & tools like Mural or Miro have this as a capability.

Creative outcomes

We did take on experiments to iterate on. That in and of itself was rewarding as we learned and got better as a team.  And I also loved that we did not always have an outcome to focus on for improvement or reducing pain in the next 2 weeks. 

At times, things were going so well with our work that we decided we needed more fun time.  We created a podcast club & Slack channel for a while, and we’d meet to talk about interesting podcast shows we had heard recently.  During COVID-19, we wanted a fun “together” time, so we started a “monthly happy hour,” when we got together to do online pictionary or other games.

Parting thoughts

This post deserved to be part 1 of the learning culture series because the practice of retrospectives is foundational.  They are a pre-requisite for the blameless post-mortems I covered in the November post. The numbers of the parts don’t matter, though.  These practices are “twin heartbeats” of a team that learns and creates magic together. 

Attributions: Thank you to Mitch Ferrer for the original version and content of the template, which we adapted over time.

Photo by Matteo Vistocco on Unsplash