Agile Retrospective: Legacy of the past and hopes for the future (20 - 40 mins)

Sometimes we want to reflect on the broader picture. Where have we been, what challenges have we faced and overcome, and where are we going. 

This retrospective works well for project / product milestones, or as an exercise for starting a new year. It looks back at a longer period of time than a single sprint, before looking forward to next year or iteration.

It covers the gather ideas section of a retrospective. For more info, see the post on how to structure an agile retrospective.

Legacy of the Past

  • Ask the team to reflect on the biggest challenges they've faced over a given time period (for example, over the past 6 months, or over the past year)
  • Ask each team member to capture their thoughts on sticky notes
  • OPTIONAL: give the team a few themes to reflect such as customer input, teamwork, wider project and development process


Hopes for the future

  • Referring back to the legacy of the past, ask the team to reflect on their hopes for the future: where do we want to be in 6, or 12 months time
  • Ask the team to capture their thoughts on sticky notes and add them to the board

Outcome

It can be easy to get lost in the woods on a scrum team. Moving from sprint to sprint, with a backlog that seems to be continually re-populated with more work.

Teams can benefit from periodically taking a broader view, taking a moment to appreciate some of the obstacles that they faced in the past, and thinking about what they hope will happen in the future. This can then be used to help the team identify specific action that can be taken towards achieving the hoped for future state.

As a follow on exercise, you could ask the team to dot-vote on the hopes that they think are most important for team, and then discuss in more detail, identifying signs of success to look out for in these areas, and steps they can take right now to make those hopes more likely to come true. 



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