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Jo's Newsletter - The Zeroeth Step 🪜
Retrospectives - The Zeroeth Step 🪜
Joanne Perold
October 04, 2024
Hello, and welcome to the retro newsletter. This week, we're discussing the zeroeth step to great retrospectives.
“The zeroth step in boosting motivation is to stop doing things that demotivate people.” Esther Derby
What's in this newsletter
The “zeroeth” step to great retrospectives is “Know what the team needs.” 🧐
A colleague shared a recent experience with me the other day. They are coaches in an organisation and work with teams and Scrum Masters. The team was about to have a retrospective, but before the retro could take place, there was a huge blowup between the team and someone else about some work they were supposed to have done.
The Scrum Master arrived for the retrospective and proceeded to run the retrospective they had planned without any acknowledgement or recognition of what had just happened. Even when prodded by the coach and one of the team members, they just said no and carried on running their plan.
When you have invested time and effort in creating a plan, it's difficult to let that go. If your toolbox has not yet been well developed, it’s challenging to change things at the last minute. That being said, it’s critical for Scrum Masters to be able to adapt to what is happening with the team and help the team focus on the things that really matter. While it’s easy to jump into the format and start collecting feedback, understanding where the team stands emotionally, mentally, and operationally sets the foundation for a more meaningful discussion.
Why It’s Important to Start Here 🏁
Tailored Focus: Every team is unique, and their challenges evolve over time. By observing the team beforehand, you can identify specific areas that need attention. Look for things that are different, like behaviours or communication styles that change. Look for things that seem to happen often that get in the team’s way.
Deeper Engagement: Retrospectives are about honesty and growth, but the team will only engage fully if the conversation feels relevant. If their needs aren’t addressed, they might disengage or, worse, feel like their real problems are being ignored. Starting with what the team needs ensures that the discussion resonates with them and fosters deeper participation. If we ignore events that have happened and need resolution, the team might begin to think that we don’t care or have their best interests at heart. Not only that, issues that aren’t dealt with fast can fester and grow to become more impactful over time.
Preventing Recurring Issues: If you don’t know the underlying issues, retrospectives can become repetitive. Without the zeroeth step, you might end up addressing symptoms rather than root causes. Observing the team’s needs can help break this cycle by working with topics that are current and real for the team.
Tips for Observing What the Team Needs 🕵🏽♂️
It’s easy for us as humans to dive directly into evaluation, judgement, interpretation, or meaning-making based on the input we see and hear. In order to be more effective at understanding the team's needs, it’s helpful to practice observations without interpretation or evaluation.
I use my detective’s hat and magnifying glass for this. They help me stay curious and focus on what I am observing before I start to interpret or make meaning from the input.
Write down observations: With my detective hat on I will make notes about things that I see and hear. What are people saying? Who asks questions? Who speaks often? Who speaks less often? What topics does the team talk about? What topics do they avoid?
Interpret and Evaluate: I use the data I have observed to come up with a few different reasons for what might be happening, and then I look for ways to clarify the most likely possibility. Sometimes, I will directly ask the team; sometimes, I ask individuals. Sometimes, I look for more supporting data. Then, I use those evaluations to decide what would make the biggest impact for the team. Here is an example: a team I worked with was consistently over-committing to work. During each sprint, I observed that they wouldn’t finish the work they had taken on, so it would carry over, and they would take on more work. I didn’t have a theory about what was happening, but I wanted to help the team think about this differently. So, I brought in the data for a few sprints and created a retro focused on capacity and getting it done
Here are some other Ideas for things to observe. 👀
Monitor Team Dynamics: Is the team quiet or talkative and joking? Who talks to who? Who doesn’t talk? What is different?
Track Communication Patterns: Observe how team members interact with one another. Do you hear certain voices more often? Are there team members who hardly share? A lack of balanced communication could signal issues like power dynamics or discomfort within the group.
Look for Burnout Signs: People are quiet, jokes are less, and people are snappy or short with one another. The number of defects discovered increases. People are forced to work long hours for long periods of time with no breaks. If a team is struggling with workload or stress, a retrospective might need to focus on well-being and how to improve work-life balance rather than just operational efficiency.
Additional data gathering. 💡
Gather from Past Retrospectives: Review action items and feedback from previous retrospectives. Has the team followed through on commitments? Are there recurring problems that never seem to get fully resolved? Identifying these patterns will help you address lingering issues that the team might need help with.
Conduct One-on-Ones: It’s important to get to know your team members as humans and build trusted relationships with them. One-on-ones are a great way to do that. These meetings can reveal frustrations or insights that wouldn’t surface in a retrospective. If team members share similar concerns privately, it’s a strong indicator that the issue should be explored more deeply with the whole team.
Starting with the zeroeth step ensures that your retrospectives are aligned with the real needs of the team, fostering trust and leading to more productive, insightful discussions. By observing the team’s behavior, communication, and well-being, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of what’s really happening—setting the stage for continuous improvement that sticks.
3 Tips for improving the Generate Insights part of your retro.
1. Ask Probing, Open-Ended Questions
It’s important to start by ensuring you are generating insights about a shared data set. Moving beyond surface-level observations by asking open-ended questions will encourage deeper thinking. Questions like “Why did this happen?” or “What could we have done differently?” push the team to reflect on root causes, not just symptoms, helping generate more actionable insights.
Example Questions:
“What assumptions did we make, and how did they impact the outcome?”
“What trends or patterns are we seeing across sprints?”
“What do you notice in general?”
“What do you notice except for?”
“What surprises you about this data?”
3. Timebox and Facilitate
Time box the conversation by setting a timer for how long you want to discuss and analyse the data. Make the timer visible so people can see it. Allow the conversation to flow and ensure there is space for everyone to share. Please do this by asking for help from other people or by allowing everyone to share their thoughts. Use pauses in the conversation to ask meaningful questions.
2. Make things Visible
Encourage the team to visualise the important ideas or thoughts from the conversation so they can use those as they move into the decide what to do phase. I sometimes start doing this for the team and then ask for help because I can’t catch everything. This encourages people to pay attention to what is being said and gives visibility to the conversation, especially the important elements.
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Next Issue
I was chatting with Esther Derby last night, and we thought it would be great to do an interview. So, coming soon, I will interview Esther and add it as a video. I’d love to know what you would like us to talk about or questions you might want me to ask. Contact me at [email protected] and share what you want me to discuss or ask for help with specific scenarios.