Agile Retrospective: Weather Report (20-30 minutes)

Sometimes we can just ask our teams "how did it go?" But often, we can elicit more discussion by providing a conceptual framework to help answer that question. 

This retrospective idea covers the set the stage and gather the data stages of the agile retrospective framework. As an extension to the exercise below, ask your team to dot-vote on ideas for further discussion, and based on this identify next steps.

Setup
  • Create four columns. At the head of each drawn four weather symbols depicting "Sunshine", "Cloudy with sunny intervals", "Cloudy with showers" and "Dark and Stormy".
Set the scene

  • Ask your team members to think about the sprint that has just finished. Which of the weather symbols best represents their feelings about how the sprint went. 
  • Ask everyone to write their name on a post-it note, and then add it to the appropriate column on the board.
  • Once everyone has put down their post-it notes, ask everyone to say just a few sentences about why they chose the weather symbol that they did


Gather the data

  • Give everyone a set of post-it notes
  • Ask "What needed to happen that would have made you choose the next level up?" For example, if you chose "cloudy with showers", what need to happen in the sprint that would have made you choose "cloudy with sunny intervals" instead.
  • If anyone chose "Sunny" - ask "What did we do well this sprint that you think we should continue doing?"
 
As noted above, as an extension to this exercise you could ask your team to dot-vote on ideas for further discussion, and based on this generate ideas and identify next steps.

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