Wanted to share my experience facilitating a retrospective for my team using the “Action for retrospectives” from innovation games. This is a excellent technique/game that allows the team to think about a retrospectives from multiple angles.

The “appreciation” angle came as a big surprise. Appreciations came in from everyone, both at personal and team level and setup the right environment for the more difficult discussions to follow. It was a very clear indicator of the fact that the team members appreciate each other but never had an opportunity to bring that in the open. In fact the appreciations clearly out numbered the other angles mentioned below.

The “puzzle” angle was about raising issues that existed without any member of the team having any knowledge about any possible resolutions. However; it turned out to be slightly different. A key finding being that a puzzle for one team member was not necessarily a puzzle for others. It remained a puzzle for one due to lack of conversation and collaboration between team members. As soon as it was bought out, potential solutions were discussed and actions items identified.

The “risk” angle highlighted issues that team members were experiencing as individuals but rarely had an opportunity to bring it in front of the whole team. There were issues that belonged to more than one buckets, in which case we allowed the team to have duplicates across multiple angles.

The “wish” angle was all about inviting innovative ideas from the team to focus towards continuous improvement. The team thought outside the box and came up with great ideas.

What makes this tool effective is that it brings out the high priority issues that might have not have been noticed by the team. If the same issues exists multiple time as a problem under puzzle or risk and there are ideas to address it under the wish angle, the issue just emerges as the highest priority. The team can then choose to identify the top issues and define action items to address those issues.

Click here to see a detailed description of the technique and access the online version to use this tool with distributed teams.