Planning a retrospective for by involving participants in its planning.

Context:

Preparing for a retrospective.

Problem:

You wish to design a retrospective process for EmotionalConnection, but you don't know how for this particular one. You feel unclear about one or more issues regarding the projects purpose {(intended) product, service, outputs}, learning and scheduling preferences of participants, or the participants culture, and it is generally hard for you to gather information helpful for designing the retrospective close to their domain.

Forces:

• Amount of time available for preparation.
• The details of the contract with the sponsor/customer.
• People seem to keep risky opinions to themselves.
• No one seems to really know where everyone stands.
• Self-censorship seems high.
• Current state of project, department, company or (local) organization.
• Current activities and schedules of participants.
• Familiarity of facilitator with participant culture.

Solution:

Involve the participants in the design of the retrospective, or provide options at the beginning of the focus group (actual retrospective meeting). You can ask as little as "How many breaks do you want?" and as much as "How about we design the entire darn thing together!"

If you are not allowed to ask any questions, or to be "in touch" with the participants at all before the actual meeting, consider not facilitating this retrospective and/or using the ?UpwardDelegation pattern.

Resulting Context:

At the beginning of the actual retrospective meeting people feel more connected to the process and motivated to learn. The participants can feel better and the retrospective is likely to be more relevant and to provide more moments of emotional connection, because they were involved in what will happen and how.

This seems particularly true when the project, department, company or an organization's local culture seems one where the FiveFreedoms are not practiced much for whatever reason. In such cultures, internally or externally, people hardly feel in control of their own destiny. Involving participants in a retrospective's design in such conditions must be done with some care: Too much sudden "freedom" can mean a virtual "bloody" revolution! The kind where heads get chopped off! Too little, and the retrospective will not fly at all and participants are likely to only go through the motions.

Rationale:

Known Uses:

Authors:

Originator: NynkeFokma ...

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