A retrospective that focusses on moving forward, differentiating between factors within the team and factors outside the team. It invites your team to discuss these four topics:
Outside the team (the world):
Dangers: What dangers from outside the team must we avoid and how?
Winds: What is pushes us forward and how can we utilize the winds better?
Insite the team (balloon):
Sandbags: What weighs us down? Do we let go when we need to?
Hot air: What can we do to lift us up? Do we do this enough?
Materials
Pros
- Good for identifying what moves you forward, and discussing what to do in order to keep moving or maybe even speeding up.
- Identifies what is holding your team back and how you handle is. Compare that to how you know you want to handle the situation.
- Invites the team to consider what comes from within the team and what is cause by factors outside the team. How do we respond differently?
Cons
- A few teams do not work well with metaphors and might find the balloon unnecessary. If you think this might be you team, keep a backup plan like Good, better, actions or Good, not good, ideas and recognition. But please remember that using different retrospectives often brings up new subjects.
Duration: Up to 1 hour
Preparation: Draw a hot air balloon or copy our picture below.
Step-by-step:
- Collect input from the team for each of the four topics.
- You decide where to start with but we recommend going in the order above. That way you start with negative things, and end with positive, while also starting outside the team and ending with internal topics. The team might also feel more comfortable talking about things outside the team and will then have “warmed” up when getting to items inside the team.
- One person can shares their screen and type, or everyone types in a shared document or whiteboard.
- Make sure the team specifies items for each of the four topics.
- Ask the team to stop, when no further input is coming up.
- Discuss what actions you need to do in order to succeed with what you have discussed. There might not be any, as the discussion and realizations can sometimes be enough. You as a facilitator probably best know what your team needs.
- Optionally: You can discuss the differences in how to change something inside the team (changing the things we do ourselves) and how to changes something outside the team (responding to things that influences us).
Contributors
Unknown, but a very popular retrospective. If you know the original sources for this retrospective, please contact us.