Appreciation Retro

The purpose of retrospectives * Continuous improvement of the team and its processes * Foster an empathetic team culture where members are unafraid to ask hard questions and have courageous conversations, both within retro and outside of it Before the meeting * Disable voting initially. Voting happens during the meeting. Each participant receives 3 votes. Decide as a team if you want authors’ names to be visible. * Send out a link to the retro board on day 1 of the sprint, so that topics can be recorded as they arise (Suggestion: add the link to the Channel Topic of your team’s slack channel) * Topics should complete the sentence given by the prompt, e.g. "I'm glad that... We delivered projects on time this sprint!". They should be clear but not too long. During the meeting * Review action items from the previous retro * Check-ins: Gather 1-word feelings about the sprint * Before jumping into any topics, review the Prime Directive of retrospectives. In EasyRetro, this is at the top-right corner of the board * Read out every topic in the first 3 columns. Invite clarifying questions from attendees to make sure that every topic is understood. Avoid temptation to discuss the topic itself. * Now that everyone understands the topics on the table, use votes to decide which ones to discuss. Enable voting and request attendees to use up all of their votes on topics in the first 3 columns. Start a 2-minute timer (top-right in EasyRetro). Voting ends when all votes are used up (you’ll have to count them) or when time’s up * Participants are allowed (and encouraged) to use multiple votes on a single topic Discuss - It’s time for the fun part - the discussion. You likely will not cover all topics, and that’s ok. If it was important, it will surely come up again in a future retro. * Don’t forget to leave ~5 minutes for appreciations & shoutouts at the end. * For each topic, starting from the most-voted: + Start a 5-minute timer + Read out the topic + Invite comments + Use Five Whys to prompt discussion, if necessary + Record action items: (Must have an owner, Ideally has a one-sentence summary, Optionally has detailed notes) + When time is up, poll attendees on whether they should continue discussing the current topic for 2 more minutes, or move on to the next topic + Attendees can thumbs-up to continue discussing the current topic, thumbs-down to move on, thumbs-sideways if neutral. Simple majority wins + If continuing the discussion on the current topic, start a 2-minute timer. Repeat parent step when time runs out Appreciations * Appreciation is important; don’t skip this section! * Appreciations are shared out loud in a free-for-all format. Unlike retro topics, they do NOT have to be added in advance. * Appreciations should be specific and spoken directly to the team member in question, not "about" them. For example: “<name>, I appreciate your thoughtful code reviews”

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