Starfish Retrospective

In most retrospectives there are three questions that are
always asked: What went well, What did not go so well, what will be improved.
These questions are common and usually cover all the points in a retrospective
however in this paper I will be describing a new way to do a retrospective, the
Starfish Graph.

                The
Starfish Graph consists of a circle with five words in it: Stop, Less, Keep,
More and Start. With these words a team can get a better overall picture of what’s
going on in their team as well as get a much better idea of what is working and
what is not (Gonçalves).

                Under **Stop** you would place anything that is a
detriment to the team or anything that might not bring value to the team. You
should definitely include any that do no bring any value to the customer.

**Less** refers to actions that aren’t worth the effort. Any action
that brings in less value then it produces. This could also cover anything that
might have been added into the group from the start but just aren’t working out
or aren’t getting any better as time goes on.

**Keep** as it suggests would be any
activity that is going well for the team. These should already be in use and
are things you want to keep doing.

                If your
team is struggling with a certain aspect of the project then you might want to
place it in the **More** category. More
would be the place for anything that you want to improve on, that you feel you
are neglecting.

                And
lastly **Start** is the place where you
would put anything, be it ideas or tools or whatever, that your team would want
to add in the next sprint.

                In a
sprint where the project suffers several setbacks, the Starfish Graph can be
very valuable as it can be used to find exactly what areas went wrong and what
you can do it fix them, by either removing them entirely, focusing more or less
on them, or adding something else that might be able to counteract the problem.
As the Starfish Graph is useful in pointing out not just the negative, but also
the positive aspects of a project, it can be a good tool to use when working on
the summery of a sprint. And since the Graph is very simple to set up, at times
you don’t even need the whole team to set it up, though they should be there to
discuss it before any changes are made.

Source

“Starfish Exercises” Luís Gonçalves, 8 Apr. 2017,
luis-goncalves.com/starfish-exercise/.

Image: http://www.scielo.edu.uy/scielo.php?script=sci\_arttext&pid=S0717-50002012000100002In most retrospectives there are three questions that are
always asked: What went well, What did not go so well, what will be improved.
These questions are common and usually cover all the points in a retrospective
however in this paper I will be describing a new way to do a retrospective, the
Starfish Graph.

                The
Starfish Graph consists of a circle with five words in it: Stop, Less, Keep,
More and Start. With these words a team can get a better overall picture of what’s
going on in their team as well as get a much better idea of what is working and
what is not (Gonçalves).

                Under **Stop** you would place anything that is a
detriment to the team or anything that might not bring value to the team. You
should definitely include any that do no bring any value to the customer.

**Less** refers to actions that aren’t worth the effort. Any action
that brings in less value then it produces. This could also cover anything that
might have been added into the group from the start but just aren’t working out
or aren’t getting any better as time goes on.

                **Keep** as it suggests would be any
activity that is going well for the team. These should already be in use and
are things you want to keep doing.

                If your
team is struggling with a certain aspect of the project then you might want to
place it in the **More** category. More
would be the place for anything that you want to improve on, that you feel you
are neglecting.

                And
lastly **Start** is the place where you
would put anything, be it ideas or tools or whatever, that your team would want
to add in the next sprint.

                In a
sprint where the project suffers several setbacks, the Starfish Graph can be
very valuable as it can be used to find exactly what areas went wrong and what
you can do it fix them, by either removing them entirely, focusing more or less
on them, or adding something else that might be able to counteract the problem.
As the Starfish Graph is useful in pointing out not just the negative, but also
the positive aspects of a project, it can be a good tool to use when working on
the summery of a sprint. And since the Graph is very simple to set up, at times
you don’t even need the whole team to set it up, though they should be there to
discuss it before any changes are made.

Source

“Starfish Exercises” Luís Gonçalves, 8 Apr. 2017,
luis-goncalves.com/starfish-exercise/.

Image: http://www.scielo.edu.uy/scielo.php?script=sci\_arttext&pid=S0717-50002012000100002