Lviv Project Management Day 2017 --- Анна Мамаєва “Retrospective: Total Recall”

1. Retrospective. Total Recall
Anna Mamaeva
2017

2. Let’s get acquainted
Senior Project Manager
8+ years in IT (Project/Product
Management)
• Mobile applications (iOS, Android)
• Web-solutions development and
management (Java, .Net)
• Product developing and Marketing
• Cross-functional team leadership
• SAFe Agile certified (2016)

4. What’s going on?
 Environment constantly changing
 Fearless competition
 Customers demand more, better and
faster solutions
 Organizations need to evolve to stay
in business and keep delivering
value; investing in large and
expensive improvement
programmes.

5. Why retro? To reach closure!
Research shows that when organizations go
through changes, people have feelings and
thoughts but no place to express them in the
normal course of business.
Thus, their experience is carried forward as a
heaviness that slows them down and keeps them
from moving into the new setting with enthusiasm.

6. My team don’t need it!
• Our team is so good, we rarely come up with
anything to improve at, so we want to stop.
• We find retrospectives boring, so we want to
stop.
• We're too busy with real work (or it take too
long), so we want to stop.
• We simply don't like retrospectives, so we
want to stop.

7. YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG, IF
• Living in the past. Spend too much on looking
back, no time to discuss future changes
• Unconnected Ideas. Individuals have ideas for
improvement but don’t connect them to team
action.
• Cloudy Thinking. If team is not clear on what to do
then nothing happens
• Thinking too big! Be realistic! How much can you
really do next sprint?
• No owner. When no one on team champions a
change, it gets forgotten

8. 1.Set the Stage: What is the purpose of the retrospective (e.g.,
improve delivery process)? What is the scope of exploration (e.g., last
week)?
2.Gather Data: Collect facts and key memories
3.Generate Insights: Interpret data, root cause analysis; identify
solutions or improvements
4.Decide What to Do: Prioritise which actions to take
5.Close the Retrospective: Summarise and review plan of action
Simple retrospective framework

9. Retro checklist
• What is the purpose of your retrospective?
• What kind of outcome are you looking for?
• Who will be invited to the retrospective?
• Do you anticipate any problems in terms of personal safety and
willingness or ability to contribute?
• What kind of retrospective process will you use?
• How will you set the stage?
• How will you gather data?
• How will you generate insights?
• How will you decide what to do?
• How will you close the retrospective?

10. 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.
Prime Directive Rule

11. Considerations
• Empower your team
• Change only one thing at a time
• Use root cause analysis to find the causes (not
symptoms) of problems
• Make the progress visible
• Use different exercises in retrospectives depending
on the issues at hand, the mindset of the team, etc...

12. Doing it first time?
 Encourage physical presence
 Avoid doing all the work yourself
 Confirm your understanding
 Rephrase blaming statements
 Keep the focus on the current phase
 Use a visual agenda
 Use a wide variety of questions
 Open Ended
 Probing
 Redirecting
 Feedback and Clarification
 Close Ended

13. Kagenda: Agenda in Kanban
• At the start of the retro day I present a list of topics/activities
we could cover in a suggested order with suggested timings
(e.g. 30 mins) in a “to do” column.
• I introduced a “doing” column with a (work in process – WIP)
limit of one topic at a time. When we decided to start a new
topic there would be a quick discussion about how long we
wanted to spend on the topic, which we wrote on the post-it
note
• Add an “actions” column to the right of “done”

15. Distributed teams
 Focus first on building relationships
 Use video cameras at all ends
 Prevent remote people ‘Going Dark’
 Faces for everyone
 Use remote facilitators
 Collect input before the meeting
 Use online tools to share
 Agree on a signaling system
 Run remote working groups
 Remote proxies as representatives

16. Tools for Distributed teams retros
 Real-time document-collaboration tools, such as Sync.in and Google
Docs, where multiple people can edit the same document in real-time and
see various contributions.
 Names and highlighting can help too if you need to run Dot Voting
 Find a real-time mind-map tool for collaboration. Consider using branches
to group stickies into groups or to represent the different arms of ‘Went
Well’, ‘Less Well’ and ‘Puzzles’.
 Shared online boards, such as Lino it, edistorm, Bubbl.us, and Wallwisher.
 IdeaBoardz is an online tool specifically for distributed retrospectives.

17. Capture the Retros Output
After the End
Take photos during exercises, and prepare a
presentation
Consider Using a Wiki
Include the Prime Directive
Make Actions Visible
Check Actions During Stand-Ups

18. Retro Exercises

19. Remember the Future
1. Set the Stage by presenting the future: ‘We are going to explore during
this session the ups, downs, and key activities that made this project
successful.’
2. Gather Data. Leave people to brainstorm events and place the events
on the timeline. Generate Insights - With a timeline providing data,
mine the information using other retrospective activities
3. Decide What to Do. ‘With a view of the future, what actions will you
take away to help you deliver a successful project according to this
future vision.’
4. Close the Retrospective. Recap what you just did
and confirm those actions. Thank participants for their contributions
and close the futurespective.

20. Margolis wheel
1. Choose a topic and ask for everyone to sit in a chair.
Those on the inner ring are considered Counsellors, those
on the outer ring Clients.
2. Use three minutes for each round of advice - roughly one minute for a
Client to explain their problem, and two minutes for the Counsellor to
talk through the impact and brainstorm potential
solutions.
3. After three minutes, the outer ring (Clients)
move one seat to the right. The inner ring (Counsellors)
remains seated.
4. When the full circle is complete, the inner
circle swaps places with the outer circle and the process
repeated until changed.

21. Players tell two truths and one lie. The object of
the game is to determine which statement is
the false one.
The goal of the icebreaker game is to
determine which statement is false. The group
votes on which one they feel is a lie, and at the
end of each round, the person reveals which
one was the lie.
Two truths and a lie

22. Break-Up Letter
Use it to understand the emotional connection
between people and their products, services, and
experiences
Try having your team write break-up letters to the
parts of their process that did not add value and that
they want to break-up with.
If you like, turn it around and write a Love Letter to
the parts of the process that made a difference in
your life

23. Retrospecting with the 5 Why’s
Sometimes you have a huge,
obvious symptom that
doesn’t have an obvious
solution, and the team needs
to spend time focused on the
specific issue.
So this is an effective way to
collaboratively drill deeply
into the causes of a single
issue

24. Retrospecting with the 5 Why’s
 Capture a statement that summarizes the issue at hand in a
clear, concise, well understood manner.
 Display this statement at the top of a flip-chart page where
everybody can see.
 Answer the question “Why did this happen” individually,
capturing your results on a sticky note and annotating it with a
“1” in the top right corner.
 Consider your answer to the previous question, and again
answer the question “Why did this happen” individually,
capturing your results on a sticky note annotated with a “2” in
the top right corner.
 Repeat this question and response cycle until you can no longer
meaningfully

25. Many Faces of Jack Sparrow

26. Many Faces of Jack Sparrow
Designed to help talk members through
how they felt about the project.
The outcome of that exercise is particularly
interesting in that each team member
identifies with an image (in some cases the
same image or expression) for various
reasons and spawns a lot of good
discussion and laughter.

27. Many Faces of Jack Sparrow

28. Visual phone

29. Visual phone
1. Break the large group into groups of three people (one or two groups can have
four people)
2. Ask everyone to write a sentence (on a post it), then place a blank post it on top of
it (for now only the sentence author knows it)
3. Everyone pass the post it clockwise
4. Each person read the sentence from the post it in front of them, and then create a
representative drawing for the sentence (on the blanket post it)
5. Everyone pass the post it clockwise.
6. On a new post it, each person write a sentence for the drawing in front of them,
and place it on top of the post it set (now the set has 3 post its; the original
sentence, the drawing, and the new sentence)
7. Everyone pass the post it set clockwise (for the groups of three people, the set
should end in front of the original sentence writer)
8. Open the post it set so everyone can see the sentences and respective drawings.

30. Superhero
Work in pairs if you can sketch your project,
team (or whatever) as a superhero
What are your
● Super powers?
● Weak points?
● Who do we need as our sidekick?

31. Have a question?
Write to
anna.mamaeva@gmail.com