New agile retrospective activity: Clarity

Clarity Agile Retrospective

Before one of my scrum master meetings, I was tasked to bring a new retrospective to the team. So I looked at the 4 key questions that a retrospective should answer.[1]

  1. What did we do well, that if we don’t discuss we might forget?
  2. What did we learn?
  3. What should we do differently next time?
  4. What still puzzles us?

I realized that many of the common retrospective activities only reveal 2 or 3 of these questions, and I wanted to create one that addressed all 4. I was inspired by the pop song lyrics “Clarity” by artist Zedd to modify the Mad/Sad/Glad retrospective[2] to Tragedy/Remedy/Insanity/Clarity.

Retrospective: “Clarity”

  • Tragedy: What should we do differently next time?
  • Remedy: What did we do well, that if we don’t discuss we might forget?
  • Insanity: What still puzzles us?
  • Clarity: What did we learn?

I tried this retrospective a few times and it seemed to receive a good response from the team. Try it out and let me know how it went.

References
[1] Retrospective key questions
[2] Mad, Sad, Glad retrospective