Preparing for Tonight’s Agile Ottawa Retrospective
Tonight’s retrospective is divided into two parts:
- Retrospective of the past year’s Agile Ottawa Events
- Discussion of Various Retrospective techniques
A great retrospective takes a little bit of preparation from all parties. For the first part I would like you to spend 10-15 minutes gathering your memories and recollections of the past year. To jog your memory, use: https://agileottawa.wordpress.com/, http://www.meetup.com/Ottawa-Scrum-Users-Group/events/past/ and http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1981258&trk=hb_side_g (Agile Ottawa on LinkedIn). Also consult your email archives.
Rough Outline of our Agenda
- Checkin – “In a word or two what are your hopes for this Retrospective”
- Appreciations
- Retrospective Timeline (see: http://www.thekua.com/rant/category/retrospective-exercises/) This is my fallback activity for Retrospectives that look back over a long period of time.
- Report out with Synthesis (small group work to find issues, with Report back to the whole)
- Circle of questions: “In this activity, the group sits in a circle, and going around the circle, each person takes a turn asking a question to the person on their immediate left. The question can be about anything they like (barring anything offensive or attacking), but it’s helpful to focus on something relevant to this group and its history/activities. The person to the left answers the question to the best of their ability, and then they ask the person to their left any other question (or the same question if they feel they’d like a better answer). This continues until the allotted time is up, or until you have gone around the entire circle twice, whichever comes last. Make sure you go around the complete circle: if some people in the group get more turns to ask or answer a question than others, it can send the wrong message.” – write up from John Wilger
- Define SMART Goals
- Puzzles
After the main event we will have a discussion about Retrospectives. The preparation for this: Pretend the evening is over and you’re leaving. You turn to your friend and say that was the most useful conversation I’ve had about Retrospectives. What made you say that? Answering this question will give our second half greater focus.
The event is at YOU i Labs: 303 Terry Fox Drive, Suite 340, Ottawa, ON and starts at 6pm (networking and refreshments), 6:30pm for the Retrospective itself. Sign in via the Meetup Group so we can get more munchies.
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