This document describes a retrospective method called the "Facebook retrospective" designed by the author. It involves printing topics related to the Scrum process on cards and having team members vote on whether they "like" or "dislike" each topic. The results are analyzed to identify topics the team agrees or disagrees on, and actions are generated for topics of disagreement. The retrospective is timeboxed to one hour and includes an energizer, voting activity, discussion of results, and generating actions for the next sprint. Feedback from trying this method is to allow a neutral option for voting and to allow custom topic cards.

1. retrospective

2. Retrospectives are a crucial part of Scrum.

3. But... running the standard ‘3 questions’* setup can
get boring.
* what went well, what went bad, what should we improve

4. There are books about how to
do retrospectives.

5. Here is a retrospective form I designed myself. I call
it the “Facebook” retrospective.

6. Setup

7. My retrospectives are always timeboxed to one
hour.

8. I always start with an energizer/ice breaker, to get
everyone active and set the mood.

9. After the energizer, I start with the actual
retrospective.

10. Like or Dislike

11. For the Facebook retrospective, I printed out
different elements of our Scrum process on A4
paper.

12. Examples of these elements are: standup, demo,
sprint planning, JIRA, team communication etc. There
were 12 different topics.

13. Each of the pieces of paper
had the topic written on it and
two columns:
Like and Dislike.

14. I introduced each of these topics briefly, so everyone
understood what I meant with them.

15. Next, I asked everyone to get up and walk over to
wall with the cards on it. Everyone had to decide if
they ‘liked’ or disliked the topic on each card by
putting their name in one of the columns.

17. After everyone was done, I added up the likes and
the dislikes seperately.
There turned to be two groups of cards:

18. Group 1
Those where the team
seemed to agree.

19. Group 2
Those where the
team seemed to disagree.

20. Define actions

21. After discussing the results, we focused on those
where we disagreed.

22. Everyone took some post-its and wrote down
actions for each of the topics where the team
‘disagreed’.

24. A lot of the actions overlapped, so the total amount
of actions turned out to be limited. We decided to
take them all into the next sprint.

25. Retro o’ retro

26. As always, we closed the retrospective with a small
retrospective on the retrospective itself.

27. Suggestions for improvement coming out of the
retrospective on the retrospective:

28. 1. People found having only Like and Dislike quite
limited. They suggested to add up a ‘neutral’ field.
(Allowing people not to pick any option would be
another solution.)

29. 2. The team suggested to add a number of cards
without predefined topics, so they add their own.

30. Time planning
Energizer 5 min
Explanation 5 min
Choose Like or Dislike 10 min
Discuss outcome 10 min
Write down actions 10 min
Discuss actions 10 min
Retro 5 min
End session 5 min

31. Did you like this retrospective setup? Try it out for
yourself and let me know how it went!

32. I am Jasper Verdooren,
founder of Sygmoid.
Find me at
www.sygmoid.nl
about.me/jasperverdooren
www.slideshare.com/jasperverdooren
www.linkedin.com/in/jasperverdooren
jasper.verdooren@sygmoid.nl

33. ‣Scrum Master Founded Sygmoid
‣Team lead PO ‣Consultancy
‣Product Owner ‣ Scrum trainer
‣Team lead PO ‣Training & coaching
‣Scrum trainer ‣Software development
2007-2010 2010-2011 2011

34. Thank you for your attention!
Questions? Comments? Let me know!