How we implemented retro in the 1C team

Hello! I'm Lena, 1C IT leader at Moex. I want to share the story of how I introduced retro into my team, which was not familiar with it, and what tools I used for this.

I hope my experience will be useful as a step-by-step guide to start hosting Retro meetings on your team.

Prerequisites for carrying out

• We had a new 1C team, some came a couple of months ago, others a few weeks, and despite the fact that everyone is individually friendly, there are difficulties in communications, there is no commonality, unexplained issues have accumulated;

• The processes of organizing Banking structures impose restrictions on the work of the team, there is no understanding of why this is needed, where it is possible to abandon bureaucracy, where there is no misunderstanding causes stress;

• We completed the sprint and it was necessary to analyze it, look at metrics, note successful practices, praise the team, and vice versa – learn from mistakes in order to avoid them in the next sprints;

• Retro can also be carried out as a separate practice to take a look at the work of the team.

Preliminary preparation

Before the meeting started, I needed to prepare for it:

• Request all team members to prepare answers to the following questions before RETRO:
  What helped? and what can be improved? – a week before the meeting

• Select Retro format:

  • In-person classic – in the office, using a board, stickers and markers;

  • Virtual – using online tools to conduct a retrospective in a remote team;

  • Gaming – the use of games and exercises to activate participants;

• Find different scenarios for games and warm-ups;

• Make a retro plan for 1.5 hours with clear timing for each stage;

• Write rules for green responses in debates;

• Schedule a meeting in the calendar and book a meeting (2 hours in advance to prepare for the face-to-face format + time of the most retro);

• Adhesive stickers, pens, markers, board/flipchart, screen with timer for face-to-face format;

• Draw a retro plan on the board in advance, prepare templates on a flipchart or on the Online Board – 2 hours;

• Display the timer, check the connection of remote workers;

• Select an assistant facilitator.

What problems did you encounter?

• Half of the team were remote workers, so we couldn’t choose the format of live communication in the office and decided to use the virtual and gaming format simultaneously;

• There were difficulties using the Miro Board, it was necessary to urgently find a tool, using corporate restrictions, accessibility to each team member and ease of use for the first time – I created a common page on Confluence, used the Draw.io Board plugin, created templates in advance on which we would paste stickers ;

Meeting goals Retro

What did I want to achieve with the retrospective?

• Sprint work analysis. View JIRA sprint metrics on dashboards, whether we have achieved the sprint goals, how many tasks are transferred from sprint to sprint, and what contributes to our success, what we need to continue to use;

• Analyze the difficulties. Become more effective in the next cycles. Developing plans to improve processes.

• Strengthening the team. The team must begin to interact better, understand each other better;

• Communicate and increase transparency. Freely discuss internal issues and share frank opinions, so no outside participants should be present;

Warm-up

The event was not intended to be official; it was necessary to defuse the atmosphere and introduce elements of the game into our Retro.

One word exercise. I ask each participant to report in what mood they came to the retro in order to understand whether people really want to be there or not.

I created a page in Confluence in advance, put up stickers and emoticons, distributed them to everyone, and taught them how to use the board together. I also set a separate timing for this, because unlike the Miro board, there are slight difficulties in interactively moving stickers.

Discussed retro rules

1. Maintain timing

2. Openness

3. Activity

4. Let's not interfere with the Team

5. Facilitator – not participant

6. It may not work out – and that's okay.

Game

For the first retro we used the Getting to Know method, where each team member had to give positive feedback and praise to everyone else

Sprint results

We have developed Dashboards in JIRA based on sprint metrics, which we always look at, remember the Goals of the past sprint and which ones we achieved.

Next, we move on to the prepared Template on the Board (analogous to Miro – Draw.io in Confluence) of 4 parts, according to the Retrospective plan.

4H method

1. What I liked

2. What have you learned

3. What was missing?

4. What you didn’t like (which process, not the person)

We handed out stickers to everyone, everyone writes on their own, we go one by one in the columns,

read aloud, vote – put emoji likes if you agree with the phrase on the sticker,

We don’t criticize people, we tell them which process didn’t go as we would like.

They let people speak on stickers, but respected the timing.

Next we moved on to the lessons learned about negative comments and the actions we should take to avoid the same problems in the future.

Completion of retro

One word question

What did you take away from this retro: problem solving, nothing, improvement, new ideas, or wasted time?

Happiness metric

Each participant rates Retro on a scale from 1 to 5.

Can also be applied drawing method: Each person makes a drawing and shares it with the team.

Retro should be carried out regularly, thanks to this we can analyze the successes and problems of the team, learn lessons from this and constantly improve work processes and increase our productivity.

Each team member was able to freely express their thoughts, concerns and offer ideas, and this helps us unite the team and improve communication, which is what we wanted to achieve.