Retrospective Plans

Name

Summary

Use

Approx. Duration (mins)

6 Thinking Hats Retrospective

Uses De Bono's 6 Thinking Hats to investigate process improvement

General use, but also a good alternative to shuffling card type retrospectives

60

Pillars Of Agile Spiderweb Retrospective

A retrospective in which teams rated their abilities in each of the categories, displayed the different ratings on a spider graph, and then discussed the result.

To talk about what abilities are important to an Agile team and how your team rates against them

60

Appreciative Retrospective

Uses Appreciative Inquiry to identify what went so well. There is no blame or negativity, and builds on the Prime Directive, that everyone in the team did the best job they could possibly do.

To remind everyone what a good job their doing rather than focusing on negatives every time you run a retrospective.

60

Top 5

Participants choose top 5 issues and bring them along for group to discuss and resolve

Expose the most pressing issues in an initially anonymous manner and determine the most effective actions to resolve them

45

Plan of Action

A Retrospective Technique for short term actions from long term goals

When retrospective actions are lacking clear executable paths (are too tied to goals)

40

Start, Stop, Continue, More of, Less of Wheel

The facilitator captures team open-ended feedback using a wheel that encourages team members to assess an iteration or milestone using 5 categories. Allow some time following completing the “wheel” to discuss and agree on specific changes to implement

Obtain feedback on team process in order to learn what should be continued and what should be adjusted as the team moves forward. Is a fast way to conduct a “meta” process discussion.

10-25

Each One Meets All

The method ensures that each participant meets and interacts with every other participant.

When retrospective participants do not know each other well

Variable!

The Complexity Retrospective

Use various tools such as a complexity radar to discover and find out how to deal with the complexity in your project

Many projects go awry due to excessive complexity; use this plan to evaluate whether your team is approaching things in the simplest way that can work; especially when the deadlines begin to loom.

40-60

Force Field Analysis

A plan designed around the force field analysis technique

A retrospective for your whole company/department or to analyse a particular topic

60

Pomodoro Retrospective

Focused and time-constrained by using the Pomodoro technique

Useful for determining a single action to improve the work of a small team

25

Retrospective Surgery

A retrospective for retrospectives

To learn how to improve the effectiveness of your retrospectives

60+

Questions Retrospective

Iteration retrospective

To get different perspectives on the same events

60

Everyday Retrospective

Simple sprint retrospective

Basic / everyday retrospective plan

90 - 120

Four L's Retrospective

Liked – Learned – Lacked – Longed For

Iteration and project retrospectives as well as for retrospection of training and conference events.

90 - 120

Sailboat

What anchors slow the team down, what wind propels it forward?

Good for the "gather data" and "generate insights" portions of a retrospective

90 - 120

Weekly Retrospective Simple + delta

Review, Plus-Delta, Vote, Actions, Owners

A weekly retrospective for your project

60

Jeopardy Retrospective

Use the answers as base to get all the good things and bad things that happened

A different way to "gather data" and to get all different opinions on a subject

60