Retrospective Activity: By The Numbers

Introduction

I thought I’d share a sprint retrospective activity I came up with recently. As I outlined in a previous post, I like to structure the retrospectives I facilitate in the form popularised by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen in their book Agile Retrospectives. That structure has five sections, each with a specific goal:

• Set the stage – Goal: Set the tone and direction for the retrospective
• Gather data – Goal: Create a shared memory; highlight pertinent information and events
• Generate insights – Goal: Think creatively; look for patterns, themes and connections
• Decide what to do – Goal: Generate and prioritize valuable, clear actions
• Close – Goal: Summarize and end the meeting

This activity – “By the numbers” – is an activity for the Gather Data stage.

Retrospective Activity: By The Numbers

Purpose

This activity is useful for the Gather Data phase of a retrospective, as it encourages team members to focus on cold facts rather than evaluations or opinions (which are for the Generate Insights stage). Like any good retrospective activity, it leaves room for people to influence the path of the meeting by highlighting events and facts that have significance for them.

Time needed

This is a fairly quick activity that you can tailor to be fifteen to thirty minutes long.

Description

The team generate a list of the facts and figures that describe the current state of the project.

Steps

1.  Introduce the activity by saying “the aim of this activity is to create an overall picture of the current state of the project objectively, without evaluations or opinions. We’ll do this by calling-out numbers that illustrate where we are. For instance, we currently have X green tests and there are Y developers in the team.”

2.  Give each person a sheet of paper and a pen. Tell them they have three to five minutes (decide which!) to create a list of the numbers they think are significant for the project. Ask them not to look at each other’s paper and tell them that the numbers can be approximate if they can’t remember them precisely.

If the team are struggling to write much down, try a couple of the following prompts:

• “Think about what has happened to you over the last sprint. What numbers are involved with those events?”
• “What are this project’s vital statistics?”
• “How would you describe the project to someone else only using figures?”
• “What are the ideal numbers for aspects of the project? Now, what are the actual numbers?”

It’s likely team members will choose figures that help them illustrate an issue or achievement that’s on their mind – like “100 ignored unit tests” or “zero open support tickets”. This is great and will provide good food for thought in the next stage of the retrospective.

3.  When the group have finished making their lists, it is time to share. Ask for a volunteer to start the process by calling out one of their significant numbers. They should not divulge what the number pertains to. Write the number on a whiteboard so the team can all see it.

Ask the rest of the group to call-out and guess what the number relates to. The interaction might go something like this:

• Volunteer: “37”
• Team member #1: “Is it – the number of users who had a support query this month?”
• Volunteer: “Nope”
• Team member #2: “Is it – the number of days since we went to the pub as a team?”
• Volunteer: “Nope”
• Etc, Etc..

When someone guesses correctly or the process has taken longer than a minute or so, write what the number was related to up on the whiteboard.

4.  Go around the group in a round-robin fashion, asking people to share one of their significant numbers and the group guessing what they pertain to, until you have filled the whiteboard or the timebox you set for the activity.

5.  Debrief the activity by asking:

• Are there any patterns in what is significant to us?
• Are there any surprises there?
• What numbers would you like to change and what would you change them to?

Variations

If the team is stumped when it comes to generating the numbers or are very worried about precision (e.g. “I don’t know how many unit tests we have, off the top of my head”), invite them to go back to the team area in the office to gather data. Make sure you get agreement on a definite time for them to be back in the meeting.

You can also make the activity a group game by breaking the team into two subgroups to come up with the numbers. Then you can make the activity competitive by scoring teams on how many of the opposing team’s numbers they can guess.

To decrease the time needed for the activity, remove the guessing part of the sharing phase – this would be less fun but would gather the same information.

What happened when we tried it?

I’ve run this activity couple of times, most recently today, and it’s worked well. Whenever I’ve used it some team members have taken a little time to warm to the activity, so I’ve needed to reiterate the instructions and encourage them to give it a shot.

Giving examples of the kind of thing you are looking for always helps. Today I gave the following examples, which seemed to unlock the group:

• 347 people on the our beta mailing list
• 24 technical debt items on out debt board

After a couple of attempts to guess what other people’s numbers are about, there’s usually good energy in the room. Suggestions can be frivolous and funny or serious and insightful – which is great. By the end, we got a pretty good idea of what people feel is important about the project at the moment.

If you are interested, here’s an image of the whiteboard after we’d done the activity today:

If you give “By the numbers” a go, let me know whether it worked well for you or not!