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]
- What did we do well, that if we don’t discuss we might forget?
- What did we learn?
- What should we do differently next time?
- 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