The retrospective is a vital component of the scrum process. In fact, it is the checkpoint of the feedback loop that evaluates what works for your team, and what does not. Here we will go through a few types of retrospective formats, and as well as what I currently use for my scrum team.
Good/Bad
A simple way conducting the retrospective is asking these two questions to start the discussion:
- What went well?
- What did not go well?
This approach is straightforward and might work for some scrum teams if the members are outspoken. However, I find that often times, the second question does not seem to be a popular one. People are sometimes reluctant to answer the question, as it often seem like calling out a teammate for mishandling something in particular.
One-Word
The one-word retrospective asks this question:
- What one word can you use to describe the past sprint?
This retrospective format can be visualized in a word cloud. An advantage of this format is that, the answers can stir creative conversations. The bad thing about this format is that, if team members are shy or reluctant to share, there are no more questions to answer. In my opinion, the one-word question can be tagged onto another retrospective format at the beginning as the ice breaker question.
Starfish
A more comprehensive format is the starfish retrospective, where these 5 questions are asked:
- What should we start doing?
- What should we stop doing?
- What should we do more of?
- What should we do less of?
- What should we keep doing?
This format relieves the team members of the potential awkwardness of the “What did not go well?” question. Instead of that question, the team members get 4 questions to address the areas of improvement. Also, when the questions are phrased this way, the answers are also action-oriented.
A shortcoming of the starfish format is that, similar answers might come in for questions 1 and 3, as well for questions 2 and 4. When doing retrospectives over anonymous user-paced presentation software such as Ahaslides or Mentimeter, answers across slides can get repetitive. This might lead to a more time-consuming and less efficient process.
Little Starfish
As mentioned above, questions 1 and 3 are similar enough that we could group them together. The same goes for questions 2 and 4 above. We can arrive at a shorter, more condensed and efficient scrum format if organize the questions this way:
- What should we start doing / do more of?
- What should we stop doing / do less of?
- What should we keep doing?
As you have it, this format is known as the little starfish retrospective.
As you might be able to see, I favor using the little starfish format for the team’s retrospective. Well, almost. I usually open the scrum retrospective with the one-word format as a way to gauge the team’s mood, and then proceed with the little starfish format.
How does your team conduct the scrum retrospective? How has it been working? Have your scrum retrospective ever gotten crickets (zero participation)? Please let me know by sounding off below.