I chaired a session about getting into reflection mode at the Retrospective Facilitators Gathering 2016. In this session we discussed what facilitators can do to help people to look back and reflect in an agile / Scrum retrospective meeting or at any other occasion where they want to learn from how they are doing.
The Retrospective Facilitators Gathering is a yearly Open Space conference by and and for experienced practitioners in agile retrospectives. People from all over the world come to this gathering to share experiences and ideas and to learn from other facilitators. The 2016 edition, which was my second one attending, was held in Sagres, Portugal. In 2017 the RFG will be held in the USA, RFG 2018 will be in Europe again.
I facilitated the session “Going outside, on a sunny morning, to think about … Reflection!” outside at the conference hotel, early in the morning. Those are already things that can help people to reflect: being at a nice location away from the office and their daily work and still being fresh. Many great ideas popped up during this session that I want to share with you in this post.
Getting people into a reflection mode helps to dive into the current situation and create a shared understanding. This understanding makes it easier for people to see what they would like to change and to come up with effective actions to do it.
If you are planning a (Scrum) retrospective, think about what you can do to make people reflect before deciding on what to do. Some of the ideas listed above might be helpful for that. If you want to know more about them, please contact me, and I’ll gladly help you (remember, my mission is to help people all over the world to get more value out of their agile retrospectives).
I want to thank Jutta, Toby, George and Karen who joined this session about getting into reflection mode and brought in their ideas, experiences and inspiration! Thanks to Toby for the “making of” picture. Finally, a big thanks to Luis and the organizing committee for having RFG 2016 at such a lovely location!
