Quadrant Retrospective
Outcomes
This retrospective is very common and is based upon a technique described in Sharon Bowman’s Training From The Back of The Room (2009) (Bowman 2009). The activity helps teams to walk through a process of understanding what helps a team, what hinders them, what actions they can take and finishes with some recognition for team and non-team members whom the team felt really worked well and should be recognised.
Timings
Allow 5-30 minutes for this exercise
Equipment
- Sheet of flip chart paper
- Sharpies for everyone
- Post-it notes
Tasks
- Start by drawing up a 2 x 2 grid on the flip chart paper with icons or titles for each of the quadrants: "Good Stuff", "Challenges", "Ideas & Actions", and "Recognition"
- Next invite the team to write on post-it notes which items helped them during the Sprint.
- Then invite the team to place their items in the "Good Stuff" quadrant with a few details about why these were important to them. (Encouraging some team discussion can also help to uncover some more detail about why these items had a positive impact on the team.)
- Repeat steps 2 and 3 for the "Challenges" and then "Ideas & Actions".
- Dote vote on each of the actions with each team member casting 3 votes to understand which actions are the most important and prioritise them accordingly.
- Finally invite the team to write post-it notes for the "Recognition" quadrant so that they can recognise who in the team or outside of the team really helped them during the Sprint, and place these on the flip chart paper. (It is usually good practice to ask the team how they might want to recognise someone outside of the team e.g. cake or a simple email of thanks for example.)
Don't forget to select at least one action to carry forwards to the next Sprint Planning session to be resolved in the next Sprint.
Alternatives
An alternative for this technique is to simply facilitate the conversation and write up the findings on the flip chart paper rather than using post-it notes. This can help to improve the flow of the conversation
References
- Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great, Esther Derby, Diana Larsen, (2006)
- Training From The Back of The Room, Sharon L. Bowman, Pfeiffer, 2009