This retrospective was run as part of an employee on boarding experience. It was a small group (3 participants).
Goal: Where are we, what does success look like? (Futurespective)
Time: 1 hr
Structure
- Weather Report (set the stage)
- Genie in a bottle (gather data)
- Wish Granted (generate insights)
- 3x3 (decide what to do)
All activities were from retromat Show archive.org snapshot
Notes:
Overall this retrospective was pretty good. The activities meshed pretty well with each other and I was able to spin a narrative around the Genie. There were a couple of curve balls thrown: The third wish in the genie activity was audacious across the board and it was difficult for participants to tie that into further activities (i.e. I wish for warp technology). The purpose of this retrospective was to support on boarding efforts for a new team member and the direction it took was more whole team based. That was unexpected and I would've preferred the entire team to be present in that case. The activities generated a number of really creative ideas, which was pleasing to see. The retrospective closed with thanks, the participants and facilitator all work closely day-to-day and had recently come from a team retrospective.
Weather Report
- Draw your mood on a sticky. Sunny, Cloudy, Stormy, Rainy....
Genie in a bottle
(5 min brainstorm, 2 min to share)
"You have freed a Genie from a bottle and you're granted 3 wishes" please make:
- One wish for yourself
- One wish for the team
- One wish for something else (eg. the world, another wish for yourself, the team, whatever. It's completely open)
- One idea per sticky
- Rules: Can't wish for more wishes
- I gave participants the full time, even if they seemed to be done earlier
Wish Granted
"The genie has granted one of your wishes above. You come into work the next day, how do you know that the wish came true? What's changed? What's different?"
- 2 min brainstorm
- 10 min debrief
- More time spent in the debrief to allow more sharing of ideas. The insights generated would be helpful for the next step
3x3
- Write 3 ideas on three stickies (one idea/stickie) based on the insights gathered from above
- Each participant will pitch their ideas one at a time, round robin style (15 sec pitch)
- At the end of each round, each participant votes (anonymously, dot voting anchors too much) for the best candidate (one vote for each participant)
- At the end of three rounds, there are the top three, each participant votes (again anonymously) for the idea that they are willing to work on.
- Participants are free to abstain
