Names have power – Using different names/labels in your next Retrospective

.net alternatives - An alternative way to do a retrospective

“We did the retrospective on our first sprint today. Usually, our retrospectives are divided into three parts:

• what went well
• what went ... less well
• what can we improve

…

Today we tried something new. The three columns were now called:

Keep doing	Stop doing	Start doing
...	...	...
...	...	...

…”

I really like that. I’m so stealing it for my next Retrospective… ;)

For that last year (6+ Sprints and Retrospectives) I start off with discussing recently past Retrospectives, what we decided then and if we executed on that as intended. Then we go into the “Good”, “Could be Improved” and coming up with actions for the “Could be’s” for the next Sprint. So it’s worked well, helping us move forward and improve our process and teaming with every Sprint.

Yet we’ve had enough Retrospectives, with the same team members, that they are getting… um… a little dry. So I’m trying to change them up a little, to keep them from becoming a chore for everyone. Little things like that mentioned above can go along way toward shaking things up a little and injecting a little novelty into the process.