Not enough time for Retrospectives? Bulls*it!
By: Stefano Sostak
Tags: Retrospectives, Growth Mindset, Agile, Improvement, Teamwork

I experienced some “ busy agile teams”, who agreed on having a regular retrospective but then constantly declined it. When I asked for the reason, most likely I got the answer: “We don´t have enough time for retrospectives.”

Of course this is a question of mindset (or a super unstable system, which again is connected to mindset). And it directly reminded me of this lovely picture:

The good thing is, there are some great blog posts about fostering and facilitating awareness in teams and organizations 👍

But for all of you who face these moments of little time left for retrospectives, I want to share two quick and easy retrospective formats: one to facilitate a 30 minute retrospective and one for a 15 minute retrospective slot. I call them the “Power Retro” and the “Super-Power Retro”.

But before I start, let me quickly share my favorite use case for these formats.

My favorite use case

Of course, reflecting on work- and team related topics should never be underestimated. I see a great value in retrospectives, which is why I would never pitch for retro slots shorter then 90 minutes*.

But even though most teams see their retrospectives as a great come together for working on team health and -growth, some unknowns can force a team to re-prioritize the planned time slot for sth. else.

Not long ago, a team had to cancel their 90 minute retro on short term because of a major incident on production. After 60 minutes the team came to my desk and told me, they would be ready now and asked, wether it makes sense to use the remaining 30 minutes for a retrospective? My answer was: “Absolutely, yes!”

The “Power Retro” (30–45 min)

When a team tells me, that we only have 30 to 45 minutes for their retrospective, I trust in the force of this “Power Retro” format. It is a quick and fun exercise and brings value even with limited time. Besides, it went through a couple of iterations based on feedback I received from my teams.

Preparation

bring pens and post-it

have a whiteboard, table or wall to display the post-its

take your phone for time boxing and foto documentation

Format

I.) Welcome everyone to the “Power Retro” (just mentioning the name raises the energy level in the group) and shortly explain the format.

II.) Invite everyone, to answer the following three questions (person-by-person; all three questions):

How are you doing and whats going on in your life right now? From 1 to 10, how happy are you in the team? (1 as lowest, 10 as highest) What is the number one topic you would like to discuss today in this round?

Give the team 1–3 minutes time to think about the questions and their answers. Ask them to write down their answers on the provided post-its.

Tip: It can help you a/o the team members when you write down the questions on several (bigger) post-its, to not forget them or mix them up.

III.) After all team members presented their post-its, let the team decide on which topic they would like to discuss first. If this seems to become a longer discussion, do a quick dot voting with 3 dots per person and start with the highest voted topic.

IV.) Now start a timebox of 7 minutes for the discussion of the first topic. When the timebox runs out, ask the team if they would like to give this topic another 2 minutes. Maybe repeat.

Tip: Wether you take notes or not while the team discusses depends a bit on your personal preferences, facilitation style and the topics brought up. But you should definitely write down the derived action items; what the team wants to do and who is going to take care of it.

V.) Repeat step IV.) for the next topic on the list.

VI.) Have at least one minute at the end of the retrospective to wrap it up, take pictures for the documentation and clean up the room.

Et voilá: you just facilitated your first “Power Retro”! 🙌

The “Super-Power Retro” (15–20 minutes)

Recently, I got confronted with the request of having a retrospective, with only 15 minutes left (see the example above: similar situation). I knew that overthinking would cost us precious minutes, so I decided to directly start!

Preparation

pen and post-its

have a whiteboard, table or wall to display the post-its

take your phone for time boxing and foto documentation

Format

The format is quite similar to the one above. One thing that changes is one of the three questions you´ll ask the team.

I.) Welcome everyone to the “Super-Power Retro” and shortly explain the format. Also mention, that this format will be quite different then usual due to the extreme time limitation.

II.) Invite everyone to answer the following three questions (person-by-person; all three questions):

How are you doing and whats going on in your life right now? From 1 to 10, how happy are you in the team? (1 as lowest, 10 as highest) What are you personally going to improve on in the upcoming sprint? (If you don´t work in sprints, change the questions to: In the upcoming [enter time until next Retrospective])

Give the team 1–3 minutes time to think about the questions and their answers. Ask them to write down their answers on the provided post-its.

III.) After the last person answered the three questions, ask everyone to write his/her name on the “going to improve” post-it and take a picture. Let the team know, that you are going to bring these points to the upcoming (regular) team retrospective to reflect on how things went.

VI.) Have at least one minute at the end of the retrospective to wrap it up, take pictures for the documentation and clean up the room.

Wow, that was quick! You just facilitated your first “Super-Power Retro”! 😎

Some additional thoughts about the “Super-Power Retro”

As you can imagine from reading the questions, this very short retrospective format concentrates on making things transparent within the team (personal mood, Happiness Index in team, what is my team mate going to work on next sprint). The goal is to have a moment of self-reflection and share relevant information with each other.

Tip: both formats are also working in remote set ups. Just change the post-its to a prepared intranet table (i.e. on Confluence) with headlines such as “name” and “topic I would like to talk about” and let people add their points there. The dot voting can me managed by using i.e. emojis.

I hope these two formats expand your toolbox for the next situation when a team is telling you time is their limitation for having a Retrospective.

Let me know what you think about these Retrospective formats. And please feel free to share your feedback with me after using them.

*team size of 4+ members