Lately, I ran a sprint retrospective with the popular nursery fable "The Three Little Pigs".
Sprint retrospectives are not only to find what went well/wrong and to improve in the last sprint. Retros should serve a greater purpose. Utilize this time to pause and inspect how we can make a bigger impact in terms of building our products, standards, culture, team harmony and more.
I like to try different retrospectives styles. This time it was a nursery fable.
My fable-based Sprint retrospective kicked-off with narrating the story "Three Little Pigs" - a story that most participants knew since their childhood. Nostalgic! Everyone enjoyed the story (and I enjoyed being the teller).
After the story, we looked at a few of our past sprints and the work we conducted recently.
In only a few minutes, the entire team consolidated their thoughts and fed them to the digital board. We had 3 columns on the digital retro board:
House of straws – what do we do that just about hangs together, but could topple over at any minute?
House of sticks – what do we do that is pretty solid, but could be improved?
House of bricks – what do we do that is rock solid?
We all dot-voted on the cards and picked the cards for discussions, highest voted first.
Towards the end of the retrospective, we learned a lot from the conversation. We produced a very good layout of thoughts, as the action items.
The retro with nursery fable was full of fun and joy.
|Slideshare link to the fable.|
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