Large retrospectives - case study
Imagine you are the managing director of a medium-sized company with just under 300 employees. Thanks to high-quality products and excellent customer service, your company has enjoyed a good reputation for many years. You operate profitably and are considered a popular employer.
However, for some time now, you have been facing significant headwinds. On the one hand, you are confronted with completely new customer demands, and on the other hand, you are facing competition from Asia, which is pushing prices down significantly. Of course, the topics of digitalization and agility have also left their mark on you. Your IT has now grown to almost 80 people and your software development teams have been working consistently according to Scrum for half a year.
However, your overall performance has not yet improved as expected. On the contrary: The lead time for the development of new products has even increased and recently the error rate was also unexpectedly high. In product management, the new agility is mainly reflected in the fact that the roadmap is changed almost every week, and sales complains that the changes promised to the customer take far too long. No wonder your support staff report a significant increase in complaints.
In short, you are under pressure!
In your situation, why would you think of doing a big, company-wide retrospective? Over lunch with an old friend who has been working as a CTO in the agile environment for a while, you come up with the following answers, among others:
Your development teams do conduct regular retrospectives, from which important improvement measures are derived and also reliably implemented. Obviously, however, optimization is primarily done locally.
For global improvement, however, it is not enough to improve individual teams. Instead, it requires learning that is oriented toward the big picture and includes all relevant areas.
In order to achieve your most important goal, namely to shorten the time-to-market, you need good coordination between all experts involved in the value creation process: from sales to marketing, product management, development and support.
To make a tangible difference for customers, you need attractive business ideas, but you also need smooth processes. If your processes are characterized by sluggishness, long queues and mutual blockades, entrepreneurial agility becomes difficult to realize.
So, if you want to increase your overall value creation, you need to put all activities under the microscope that lie between the initial business idea and the satisfied customer.
But no sooner have you settled the "why a big retrospective? ", the how questions come crashing down on you like an avalanche: How do you get your division managers to participate in this experiment? Who should participate in the first place? How do you design the meeting? How do you ensure that all relevant information is available? And how do you get the right feedback back to the organization after the retro?
To clear this jungle of questions, your CTO friend recommends the support of an agile management consultant with whom he has already had good experience.
The preparation
The very next day you call the consultant - and take it as a good sign that he or she is not only available, but also has time for your request. You are even more positive at the end of your 45-minute conversation: From your point of view, you have addressed all the main question marks, received directional answers and reached clear agreements. As promised, you send the coach some additional information about your business context as well as the results of the last team retros; and the very next day you receive a short memo of the conversation as well as the concrete service and cost offer from the consultant. You skim over both and nod in confirmation: so far, everything seems clear.
You therefore devote the rest of the half hour you have reserved for the topic to the enclosed guide. "Great Retrospectives" is the heading under which core tasks and action-guiding questions are listed.
Define a sponsor. Who stands for the entire project and does everything to maximize the return on investment? Well, that sponsor is undoubtedly you!
Review your objective. What exactly do you want to achieve with this meeting? And how will you know that you have achieved the desired result? Quickly reach for your pen to remind yourself, in black and white so to speak, what you want to achieve with your big retrospective - and how you can tell that the impact you are aiming for is actually happening.
Consider who should be responsible for the operational implementation of this project. Who can ensure professional preparation and implementation? And who will ensure the best possible transfer? Again, you don't have to think long. In one go, draw up a list of the names of those you want to recruit for this purpose. In doing so, you deliberately make sure that people from different areas and functions are represented in this group, so that you ensure diversity of perspective in advance. You also want to enlist your internal organizational developer as the central point of contact for the external consultant who will have overall responsibility for the process. You briefly review your notes again - then, with the subject line "Experimenting friends wanted! ", you send out your invitation for an initial preparatory meeting.
Look for the personal conversation. How do you win people over for your improvement experiment? What should you clarify in advance, ideally face to face? What actions will help you to strengthen the necessary sense of urgency? Do not limit your information to a formal mail. Instead, seek direct contact with the people you want to win over for your project, tell them about your ideas and get their feedback! In addition, you should consider in which regular meetings you already place the topic. All this will help you to set the right course and keep the first joint meeting as focused as possible.
Go through all the key aspects of the planned retro together. What should be discussed in the preparatory meeting? What do you need to clarify? What agreements will you make? At the beginning of your preparatory meeting, your consultant outlines the following agenda: "Focus", "Participants", "Framework", "Procedure", "Transfer", "Follow-up". After briefly recalling the previously communicated "Why a big retrospective? "you go straight into medias res: Who do you want to be at this retrospective? Who do you absolutely need to achieve your goals? And who can you leave out with impunity? Fortunately, clarifying these questions doesn't take 20 minutes. On the one hand, everyone agrees with the idea of a delegate system, and on the other hand, there is quick agreement on who to recruit and how to proceed. The framework is also set in no time at all: for the 40 or so delegates you want to invite from the various divisions of the company, you will book your internal conference room, which you normally use mainly for Christmas parties or company anniversaries. You are eager to give this room a completely different feel! In any case, it meets the requirements defined by the consultant: It is sufficiently large (150m2), can be flexibly set up (including the bar tables you particularly value) and has all the features needed for the equipment (screens, sound system, good lighting, flipcharts, whiteboards, moderation material). On the advice of the consultant, you assume a time frame of 5 hours including breaks. You also like his suggestion of inviting people to a small drink immediately after the retrospective so that the meeting can end informally. Before you entrust your internal preparation group with the task of working out an initial moderation plan together with the consultant, you lay down some cornerstones for the aftermath: written information to all, Dropbox link for photo documentation, written summary of the key results on the intranet, personal feedback from the delegates at the next regular meetings. Finally, check your calendar to find some options for the "Save the Date" you want to send out to all delegates today. Before you leave, remind everyone of the importance of face-to-face communication, which is now the responsibility of all members of the preparatory group.
Check and improve the moderation plan - and all framework conditions. Which cornerstones are set? What do you do as a sponsor? How will moderation be done? What workflow will be followed? As agreed, meet a week later for a final coordination meeting with the preparation group. In front of you is a large whiteboard with a matrix-like structure. You read "Time", "Content", "Structure", "Goal" on the horizontal axis, while the concrete procedure is marked out vertically with the help of different coloured post-its. LINK TO MOD-PLAN??? In an entertaining double conference, two members of the preparation group guide you through the elaborated flow. The consultant stays in the background, only occasionally contributing some experience. The program appeals to you immediately: a clear structure, a lot of interaction, a dynamic change of different work forms and a clear move towards the goal in terms of concrete results. Despite the positive response, you work out some suggestions for improvement in the course of the discussion, especially with regard to time-boxing and focusing on the central issues. The group promises to incorporate these suggestions the very next day, so that nothing now stands in the way of the official invitation.
Finalize your preparation work. How do the employees you invite to the retro react? What are the reactions in the meetings where the project is discussed? How do you take the feedback you receive into account in your overall concept? And what all needs to be organized so that the big retro can take place as planned? It's in the nature of agile that you'll come up with more ideas for improvement between now and implementation. You trust that the most important things will be considered. Just as you trust that all the necessary organizational work will be done so that nothing stands in the way of a powerful execution.
The implementation
Set up the stage. How is the room set up? What happens when the participants arrive? What are the standing and seating arrangements? As you hurry through the hallway towards the conference room, lively music is already wafting towards you. In the room itself, there is a concentrated hustle and bustle: posters are still being written on the left-hand side, while pens and cards are spread out on the tray tables on the right-hand side. Further back, your organizational developer and the external coach are laughing and moving a few high tables to the side. You can't wait for the empty room in front of you to fill up with people! A little later, you put your heads together one last time: No, there are no more questions about the process - and yes, everyone from the preparation team feels ready to go!
While you are still working on a few key words for your opening speech, the first participants are already arriving. After the intensive preparation phase, it's finally time to get started.
Go in strong. How do you open the meeting? How do you activate those present? What conditions are set? When you officially start the meeting, you almost feel a little solemn. Not only for the employees present, but also for yourself, this is the very first company-wide retrospective! As agreed, you also say a few words about the why: "The beginning of a new era of shared learning," you conclude your short speech, "which will help us to better align the whole company with the customer - and at the same time help to make our work easier. " The hearty applause that rings out is unexpected. But you barely have time to read the faces in front of you (curiosity? amazement? anticipation?), because already the two room moderators invite you to the first exchange. "Speed dating on the question: what's on my mind most at the moment? " announces the external coach and your organisational developer adds: "3 x 3 minutes with three different conversation partners you haven't talked to for a while. " In no time at all, the room fills with an intense buzz of voices - and before you know it, you're part of it yourself. Every three minutes, a bright chime alerts you that it's time to change partners. Somehow the whole thing reminds you of a well-choreographed dance. After the last gong, the presenters thank you for the energetic start. Then they briefly explain the agenda, the organizational framework and some rules. Less than five minutes later, you already find yourself in the next work phase.
Share your experiences with each other. How do you organise the joint review? How do you ensure that the overall picture is as clear as possible? And what business challenges do you focus on? "What went well in the last few months? What didn't go well? And what is the most important challenge that we should definitely overcome? ", is the next assignment. To do this, well-mixed groups of no more than eight members should come together, each facilitated by a representative of the preparatory group. The high tables and chairs are quickly distributed around the room and the discussion begins. In order to give everyone a chance to speak and to draw on as wide a range of experiences as possible, the participants first talk to each other in pairs and write down the two most important answers to the three questions on stickies. These are then presented one after the other and prioritized via a joint dot-voting. The six stickies with the most points are finally presented by a group spokesperson in plenary.
Combine insight with outlook. Which challenges are selected for more detailed processing? How exactly does this processing take place? And how do you arrive at concrete suggestions for improvement at the end? While the participants are streaming towards the coffee machines, use the first break for a first overview. In no time at all, the preparatory group has gathered the answers presented on three pin boards, clustered them and given them concise headings. The total of five challenge clusters form the basis for the next phase, which begins with a joint standup in front of the three boards. As agreed, you thank them for their openness and then briefly comment on both the positive and negative experiences - which is easy for you, as there is nothing on the two boards that you cannot relate to. After that, the facilitators introduce the next step of the work, namely the selection of the challenges to be worked on in a solution-oriented way. This selection runs through the so-called hosting principle, which means that two people are sought in each case to act as joint hosts and take responsibility for a constructive discussion. "What is the basis of this challenge? And what specifically can we do to overcome it in the most sustainable way possible? ", the desired outcome is mapped out, and a full 45 minutes is allotted to achieve it. Under the motto "sponsoring measures", each group should have visualised their top 3 proposals on A4 sheets at the end and be ready for a new round of plenary networking.
Present the measures that have been worked out. Which proposals are presented? How do you generate feedback on them? And how do you come to directional decisions? They interpret it as a good sign that it doesn't take a minute until all clusters are assigned. Yes, as the hosts of the various topics move with their guests to their new workplaces, you almost feel something like a sense of optimism: at last some of the major impediments that have been haunting your company for months are being tackled! You are reassured to find that the advice to form cross-functional working groups as far as possible has also been taken into account; then you immerse yourself in one of the discussion processes. It's good that the preparatory group has planned adequate time buffers so that stress doesn't arise at the end of all things, when it's all about trend-setting decisions. After just under an hour, the first working group finally presents its top three proposals. It speaks for your people that not only the first group, but also all the others stick to the given presentation time of maximum 3 minutes. You also like the fact that new people are now presenting again, so there is an amazing diversity of voices in the plenary as well. In terms of content, there is some overlap, similar to the collection of information: no less than four measures go in a similar direction (focus on "optimizing cross-team and cross-departmental coordination"), three proposals on the topic of "creating company-wide transparency" and the topic of "flight levels" also crops up again. Apparently, the latter is also related to the other two and is considered a promising catalyst for business agility. In addition, there are some suggestions for improvement that, in your opinion, require little effort and can be implemented immediately.
Use the break to tune in. What resonance do the suggestions trigger in you? What do the table and room moderators think? And how do you use the assembled entrepreneurial intelligence to come to the best possible decisions? Once again, the time in which the participants allow themselves a little time out is a valuable resource for you. They use the official break to consult with the preparatory group on the proposals presented. As agreed, everyone helps together to create not only an overview, but also a common assessment of what seems particularly promising, what needs more discussion, and what is not currently purposeful.
Give space for feedback and clarification. What is the response to the suggestions? What do the individual table groups think? And how do you ensure an open exchange before you decide? Even great retrospectives stand or fall with the fact that concrete decisions are made. The question is, what are the right decisions? In order to arrive at the most convincing answers possible, you rely on two feedback loops: first, one that takes place once again at the tables, and a second in a so-called "panel of experts". One representative from each table, two table moderators and, of course, yourself are invited to the latter. In addition, there is an open chair in the semicircle on the stage, which can be used at any time for impulses from outside, but which cannot be occupied permanently. As the two room moderators explain, the questions are twofold: 1.) "What speaks to us most strongly? " and 2.) "What should still be clarified so that we set the course towards improvement as well as possible? " As expected, the discussion is constructive, but definitely heated. After all, there is a lot at stake!
Make bold decisions. Who will take responsibility for the further direction? Which measures do you consider the most promising in the end? And how do you ensure clear conditions here and now? At the end of the 20 minutes reserved for the panel, one thing is clear: As the managing director, it is up to you to ensure directional decisions here and now. To do this, you use a simple traffic light system: you immediately set three of the smaller clusters of measures, which are unanimously agreed to require manageable effort, to green; for two other proposals, which are obviously related to these flight levels, you announce an orange because you want to get smarter about them before you invest here. However, on behalf of the entire Preparatory Group, which - according to one of the proposed actions - is to continue as an Organizational Development Guild, you commit to making a definitive decision on this as well within the next four weeks and communicating it to everyone. In the end, you deliberately set the two remaining measures to red, as they do not seem to you to be goal-directed at this time. You conclude your directional speech by pointing out once again that this one-off retrospective will not be the end of the matter. Instead, you want to see this as the start of a sustainable improvement process, about which you want to keep everyone informed on a monthly basis from now on.
Make sure you have a powerful closing. How do you close your big retrospective? How do you ensure an energetic ending? And how do you get feedback to validate your experiment? The facilitation duo steps into action one last time: titled "Feedback Trios," they invite you to participate in an interactive closing session that focuses on answering three questions. "What did I like about today's retrospective? " "What could we do better next time? " "What should we all pay particular attention to if we want to improve our business in the long term? " The groups of 3 are asked to once again record your most important answers on stickies and assemble them on the back of the three info-gathering boards. While stickies are being delivered one by one, the members of the preparation group help directly at the boards to arrange the feedback brought in as clearly as possible right away. When you finally take up your post as managing director for the last time to thank everyone present for their efforts today, you are almost speechless in the face of the multitude of positive comments. "I'm seriously impressed," you say truthfully, as you notice many more delighted, smiling and curious faces now then when you started the retro. "And also totally confident after this afternoon that we're on the right track to comprehensive improvements!"
The follow-up
Do Food. How do you ensure that all participants do not run away with the end of the Retro? How do you xpress your appreciation for the work you've done? And how do you reward yourself for it? While you were still busy with the official closing of Retro, employees in your company canteen had already started setting up. Secretly, quietly, you have prepared a rich buffet with different drinks and culinary delicacies in the background.
The saying on the poster above the buffet "Please grab and enjoy! "Many people don't have to be told twice.
Informal networking. How do you use the informal part to strengthen contact with colleagues? What do you do to find out more about current thoughts and moods? And to rejoice together about what has been achieved? Undoubtedly, it always sounds a bit wrong to plan not only the formal but also the informal part. However, based on your years of experience, you know all too well that many important things happen away from the meetings. That's why you've already agreed in advance not to limit professional communication to your big retro and then immediately switch to party mode. Instead, just like all the other members of the Organizational Development Guild that has been created, you try to make targeted contact with some people who are considered critical spirits in your company.
Documentation. How do you ensure that all essential results are backed up? Which artefacts are photographed? What is collected to be processed further down the line? Meanwhile, in addition to networking, there is some homework to be done. One of the most important is to ensure a clean documentation. Together, some members of the preparation group check that all artifacts have been photographed and properly saved in the prepared Dropbox folder. Later, this folder would be revised again at leisure, shared with those present and finally made available to those who did not participate in the retro.
A short manoeuvre critique. Which impressions predominate at the end of the retrospective? Which highlights did the presenters experience? What was particularly challenging? And what is important to look out for in the follow-up? As agreed, meet 45 minutes after the end of the retro for a short standup with the preparation group. "Feedback and feed-forward" announces the external coach and suggests a short go-around where everyone in turn points out their key impressions. What was particularly impressive in the last few hours? And what should the group look at more closely in the following? In less than 15 minutes you have exchanged a lot of Ahas and recorded some interesting interim results.
Determining further steps. What exactly happens after the retro? Who takes care of a good flow of information? How do you ensure a differentiated reflection with a little more distance after the short-term manoeuvre criticism? And above all: how do you maintain the momentum to actually implement the targeted improvements - and to continuously learn from them? As part of the preparatory work for your first major retro, you naturally also talked about the aftermath. You remember all too well the external coach's emphatic words that the real quality of the engagement will only become apparent in the weeks and months that follow. Success is what has consequences, you still have his standing sentence in your ear - as well as the hint that you could do a lot for this success. Accordingly, you have planned in advance not only the further information process, but also the continuation of those professional learning loops that congenially combine retrospection, insight and outlook. In other words, a differentiated retro of the retro, which is about medium-term lessons learned, but also about monitoring the implementation of the measures decided upon. In addition, you are already looking forward to your personal meeting with the external coach, which will mainly be about reflecting on your own role. But that is really another story....
If you are interested in a clear summary of the mentioned guideline and/or the elaborated moderation plan, please contact us at office@loop-beratung.at.
Great Retros
Retrospectives are as much a part of the agile process as the amen to prayer. They mark the final act of each sprint, ensure regular inspect and adapt and help to optimize the value creation process. Whether Scrum, Kanban, Lean Start-Up or Design Thinking is used - pausing, reflecting and learning together is a fixed point of every agile team. It is not for nothing that retros are considered the engine of continuous improvement.
So all in all, there are a lot of good reasons to be a fan of retros. In agile practice, however, things don't always run smoothly:
The meeting falls victim to the operational stress and is shortened or does not take place at all (quote: "We really don't have time for that now!").
The participants slide into product- or technology-oriented debates, any problems in the cooperation are not brought up ("the elephant in the room remains invisible").
People mainly talk about issues whose improvement lies outside their own sphere of influence ("management/department X/stakeholder Y should finally...").
There are self-critical insights, but no trend-setting improvement measures are derived from them ("we are going round in circles").
Measures are defined, but not implemented, so that at the next retro you are left empty-handed ("our great ideas get bogged down in the daily grind").
The improvement projects are implemented as agreed, but nothing improves in terms of agility ("our major impediments still exist").
So far, so bad - all the more so as many of the problems mentioned are home-made.
The complexity of effective learning is as often underestimated as one's own communication skills are overestimated.
In the meantime, there is a wealth of good practice that can be used: be it to clarify the purpose of retros once again; be it to improve one's own facilitation skills; or be it to strengthen the implementation of concrete measures.
So far, so good - if it weren't for this puzzling phenomenon that I listed last: Retrospectives are designed tiptop, strengths are adequately appreciated, problems are thoroughly investigated, solutions address the root causes, many things are even implemented as planned - and yet the overall situation hardly improves. I call this phenomenon agile idleness. Despite well-tended retrospectives in all agile teams, the company remains as sluggish as before. Neither do they succeed in shortening the time-to-market nor do they manage to react faster to new customer requirements. Not to mention the rapid implementation of innovative solutions.
When feedback loops get lost in nowhere
The question, of course, is what that might be. Are the wrong things being highlighted, perhaps? Is there too much focus on problems that can be solved rather than those that should be solved? Is there a lack of directional ideas? Or are retros perhaps not as great a format as everyone thinks?
If you are treading water despite all the agile self-reflections, the temptation to question the concept of organizational learning as a whole is obvious. Or at least pass the buck to the improvement meeting. There are enough people who think retros are a waste of time anyway.
Of course, the old joke about the stressed woodworker who has no time to sharpen his blunt axe can be applied here - after all, he is there to cut down trees. But this puts us in even more danger of missing the proverbial forest. Indeed, the problem of agile idleness arises precisely because we persist in focusing on the individual trees.
Less metaphorically speaking: If each team only conducts its own retrospectives, don't be surprised that the performance of the overall organization improves little. Sometimes it even deteriorates, true to the old law that local optimization (each team eliminates its own impediments, sometimes unfortunately at the expense of other teams) can easily lead to global suboptimization.
At this point, one may loudly remind oneself that an organization is more than the sum of its individual ab-parts. If we want to optimize the big picture, we must also examine the interactions across teams and hierarchies.
In other words: the interaction of all essential elements in the value creation process. After all, lack of transparency, lack of communication, poor coordination and hidden dependencies that lead to long waiting times are not team issues, but company development issues.
Complex formats
In order to be able to work on such topics, a format appropriate to the complexity is needed. If a company wants to learn globally, it cannot simply add up the results from the team retrospectives. Instead, it must ensure lively networking between the individual learning loops. It is only through cross-functional and cross-hierarchical discussion that it is possible to make the whole elephant visible, so to speak. It is a matter of creating sufficient transparency and carefully exploring the identified construction sites before systemic solutions are worked out. Where does the organizational shoe pinch the most? How do our pains fit with what is currently happening in the market? What are our customers/users actually concerned about? And what do we need to do to serve their needs faster and better?
Of course, we can also deal with such issues in the existing bodies: a departmental meeting here, a management circle there and, in addition, those special working groups that have recently been fondly called guilds. Personally, I think it is much more effective to use the retrospective format for this, but to free it from the fixation on individual teams. Instead, I recommend deliberately going all out. In other words, retros in large groups.
The maxim of such groups, which by definition consist of more than 20 people, to bring the whole system into one room, should of course be implemented with caution and a healthy dose of pragmatism. Otherwise, we'll have to start looking for the nearest free airplane hangar to gather 250, 400 or even more people. This may make sense in certain cases, such as a far-reaching transformation project in which everyone should be involved, but for the majority of cases it is sufficient to work with an intelligent delegate system.
Such a system has its pitfalls, of course. Are the delegates selected by a central authority or determined bottom-up? Who has the trust of the team or department he or she represents? How many do you need in total to ensure sufficient diversity of perspective? Who do you think you can leave out with impunity? And how do you regulate the flow of information so that the delegates both provide lively impressions and ensure that the feedback is as unfiltered as possible?
Go all out
This smells of effort, as does the organization of a suitable framework. In practice, however, the whole thing is not so bad, because such coordination costs are offset by a high return. Assuming professional moderation, large retros are valuable in several respects:
they create transparency and clarity,
they promote exchange across organisational boundaries,
they allow a differentiated picture of the actual situation from different perspectives,
they provide for more understanding among each other,
they facilitate the elaboration of improvement actions that contribute to the development of the whole company,
they inspire change here and now,
they combine forces and ideally create a common spirit of optimism.
The professional moderation of large groups is of course easier to anticipate than to implement. After all, such groups are fundamentally different from teams: whether this concerns the level of contact (close vs. distant), the dynamics (person- vs. structure-oriented) or the control (direct intervention vs. logistics).
So in my next blog, I want to use a case study to present a practical guide that should help you in your work with large groups.