Juan Banda discusses the importance of nonviolent communication (NVC) in scrum retrospectives to foster empathy and understanding among team members. He outlines a four-step NVC process to express observations, feelings, needs, and concrete requests effectively, contrasting it with harmful labeling and violent communication. Role-play activities are suggested as tools to help teams recognize and alter negative communication patterns, contributing to healthier retrospectives.

1. Nonviolent
Communication
Role-play for
Pacifying Scrum
Retrospectives
Juan Banda, MSc, CSP, ACP,
PMP
juan.banda@percella.com
Photo by TZA
Photo by Darklight

2. Violent
communication
exists in
Retrospectives
because often
times team
members don’t
know how to
express their
feelingsPhoto by Iceman Forever

3. Photo by Ghaith Salih
Without
feelings there is
little chance
that other team
members feel
empathy for
what one is
trying to
communicate

4. Photo by farmgatecreations
Frequently
what triggers
violent
conversations is
the habit of
labelling people
and calling
them
something

5. Violent
communication
is often
ineffective
because it does
not imply
specific
requests for
somebody to
do somethingPhoto by jhritz

6. Nonviolent
communication
comes to
rescue by
proposing a
very simple
communication
process based
in four steps
Photo by Olli Kelalainen

7. 1. “The concrete
actions we are
observing that are
affecting our well-
being
2. How we feel in
relation to what we
are observing
3. The
needs, values, desir
es, etc. that are
creating our feelings
4. The concrete
actions we request
in order to enrich
our lives” Marshall Photo by Atomicity

8. Instead of saying
“Peter you’re a
lousy
programmer that
broke the build
so often in the
past Sprint”
Photo by tylerburkphotography

9. Say something like
“I’ve observed
that the build was
broken three
times during the
last sprint, I feel
frustrated and I’m
needing that this
stops happening
so I can have a
build to test…Photo by scarycrow

10. …Peter could you
make sure you
run your unit
tests before
checking in your
code?”
Photo by unravelled mistakes

11. NVC perfectly
fits into
retrospectives
meetings
because it
drives the
communication
process without
violence
Photo by dolfi

12. But you can use
the NVC process
and still
communicate
violently because
of your body
language or the
tone of your voice
Photo by Ti.mo

13. Role-play
activities are like
little
improvisations
that help teams to
be aware of the
subtle violence in
their
communication
Photo by Erwannicolas

14. Improvisations
are also healthy
because they add
humor and
reflection at the
same time
Photo by Erwannicolas

15. The key is not to
become a team of
great actors but to
uncover
communication
patterns that are
violent and
change them
before they hurt
the whole NVC
process Photo by Serketamine

16. Recomended books

17. @juanbandajara (twitter)
slideshare.net/juanbanda2
percella.com (site)
juanbandaonscrum.blogspot.com/ (blog)

18. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/deed