Reaching land in a certain sprint would indicate a next version of the product. This allowed the team to indicate what they thought to expect the next few sprints and what route the boat would take before reaching land. So I decided to create a poster with a whiteboard film and adapt the sailboat retrospective to include sprint wave lines. Adding sprints to the mixīecause of the fact that we, as many other teams, had a deadline, I was searching for a way to get some perspective on where we were standing with regards to the goal we were trying to achieve. Each team member can add some of these items to the picture to indicate what factors they think are important. The sailboat retrospective lets the team have a an island representing the goal to reach, have the wind as external factors helping the team, anchors that hold the team back, and rocks as risks that the team would have to overcome. It does not store any personal data.As I was asked to organise one of the retrospectives for our team I had a look at several retrospective types and found the sailboat retrospective that I thought could best be adapted for our team. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Performance'. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Necessary'. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Functional'. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Analytics'. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Try to improve a little each sprint instead of trying to bring big changes at once. A small action that brings a small improvements is already very good. Remember: you will not always have big live changing action items in each retrospective. You want to have 1 – 2 action items at the end of the retrospective that you can implement in the next iteration(s).

Don’t focus too much on external people or factors, but mainly on the things that are within the control of the team to identify improvement actions that the team is able to take.

While having the discussion on a topic, always focus on what’s within the control of the team. It’s important that everything you are discussing in the “Helping us”, “Holding us back” and “Obstacles” categories are related to the overall goal that you are trying to achieve as a team. After this, you can do a quick dot voting session to determine the most important one(s) and start with a discussion on those.įirst discuss all the post-its in the “Destination” category and come to a conclusion of the goal of the team before discussing the other stages. “Obstacles”: what risks do we see in the future, that could prevent us from reaching the goal? Something that we see happening, but is not yet happening to us today.Īfter explaining the stages to your team, give everybody a few minutes to write down their thoughts on a post-it.“Holding us back”: what is currently holding us back, slowing us down, or preventing us to reach our goal?.“Helping us”: what is currently helping us on our road to achieving this goal? What should we keep doing?.What are we striving for? As mentioned above, this can be something related to the product that you are building, or it can be something related to the way of working within the team. “Our destination”: what’s our goal? This should be the main theme for the retrospective.The sailboat retrospective consists of two rounds:

Sailboat retrospective