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Good, not so good, ideas and recognition

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Identify what “went well” and “what could have been better”, “new ideas” and “recognition” by drawing up 4 squares or a cross.

Materials

Pros

  • Simple and easy retrospective

Cons

  • You might find that there’s not enough room for what was good/not so good as this might take up more space than ideas/recognition.

Duration: Up to 1 hour

Preparation: Draw up 4 squares or a cross, one for each headline as above, or download the image below.

Step-by-step:

  • Collect input from the team (either one person types or ask everyone to type on an electronic whiteboard).
  • Wait until no further input is coming up.
  • Go through all headlines:
    • “What went well” and remind the team that we must continue to do this.
    • “What could have been better” and identify actions to ensure this won’t be an issue at next retrospective. Also assign the action to one or several people.
    • “New ideas” are important as above.
    • “Recognition” (or “Flowers, wine, beer, whiskey” as my team insists on calling this) is important for the team members. It really means a lot to be mentioned here and can make a big difference for the individual. As a facilitator/scrum master, maybe you can encourage input to team members who hasn’t been mentioned for a while?

When collecting input from team members, make sure you give them enough time to think. It could be an idea to count slowly to 30 before stopping the retrospective. Often very good suggestions comes after 20 seconds!

If you ask one person at a time for input, it might be an idea to start with outward-going people (extroverts) to give others time to think up input.