Blog Archives

Gather Data: Pyramid Building








“Does everyone know what this means?”
“Does anyone agree/disagree?”
“Why do you think this is true?”







Let me know if you have any questions!

Terry T




Managers in Retrospectives

It’s a topic that has come up many times, should managers attend retrospectives?    There are some concerns that appear and need to be discussed by the team.

How will this influence the team?

So how will this positively and negatively affect the team?  The first thing that pops in my head is trust.  As self-organizing teams, we need to have boundaries and the same is true with managers.  As a manager, you should be asking yourself, “When should I step in?” and “when do let the team fail on their own without affecting the company?”  It’s a balancing act of staying involved with the team without getting in the way.  (As a side note, I hope teams know that maintaining this balance is not easy.  It reminds me of developers pairing.  An expert developer has to be willing to let a novice make mistakes; otherwise they will never learn anything.  Now complicate the issue by adding 3 to 7 team members.  No amount of training can prepare you for that. )

At the individual level, management influence can have an effect in two ways.  First, important topics may never come out because no one wants to make any teammate look bad.  This defeats the purpose of the team retrospective completely.  Getting these issues out in the open helps the team become better and builds trust.  The alternative is letting issues fester until the team implodes.  Second, teammates could use the retrospective to make an individual look bad, leveraging the manager to make themselves look better.  It sounds a bit high school but believe me, it happens.

Still not convinced?  Think about how employees read into every action managers make.  Have you ever heard a buzz around the office because two managers were having a conversation behind closed doors?  We hear:  Someone is getting fired!  Raise are going to suck this year!  The company is getting bought out!  Turns out, they were just talking about the baseball game last night.  For some reason, employees become paparazzi and all eyes are on the managers.  They always smile when talking to one individual.  They must like them better!  He sent an email when Billy Bob left but called a just-in-time meeting for Phil.  They must hate Billy Bob!  It’s a bit ridiculous.  With examples like this, I can’t imagine how a manager in a retrospective could influence the team.

Why does the manager think they need to be there?

In the past when I have asked this question to managers the response I always seem to get is, “I need to know what is going on with my teams”.  I agree managers should know what is going on with their teams; however, there are more effective ways.  As discussed before, what is really going on with the team is most likely not going to come out with them sitting in the room.  It gives me the image of a group of teenagers trying to discuss an issue at school while mom and dad are in the room.  Not going to happen…in most cases.

Ok, then how do managers find out what happened during the retrospective?  I asked Esther Derby the same question.  The answer was simple, ask the facilitator.  It’s disappointing to me that the many times I’ve passed this on to managers and only been asked once.  I can only assume they think know already or don’t really need to know what happened in the retrospective.  But what about the good notes we take at every retrospective?  Notes, just like emails, only tell half the story.

Who makes the final decision?

The best thing to do is for management to get in a room and make that decision without any input from their teams. /TROLL.

In order to answer this, I think we need to ask ourselves why we are doing retrospectives in the first place.  Take it to the team.  There is a level of comfort and maturity that must be attained before a team can accept managers in a retrospective. Every member of the team must be at that level.  Your teammates and managers are all human

Words Retro for Team Building


The order goes like this:

  1. Pick an available theme word from the words list
  3. Ask your question
  4. The answerer responds
  5. Everyone gets a chance to respond weather they agree or disagree
  6. The word is removed from the list
  7. The person to the right is next
  8. Rinse and repet




Let me know what you think.


Terry T

Team Building Thoughts Take One

This week  I tried something different while facilitating a retrospective for a team in my department.  I asked them if instead of conducting a normal retrospective, if they would enjoy some team building exercises.  I’m glad to report that they said yes because it’s something I’ve wanted to try for a while now.

I used an activity from Lyssa Adkins Agile Coaching book about value words.  The activity is explained for starting up new teams, however, I saw no reason it could not be taken advantage by an active team.   I had to make some modifications for time and to account for video conferencing to a remote site.  I created a value word poker game which will need some refinement before sharing.

After the hour ended, I got lots of positive feedback from the team.  Great success!  It got me thinking, was the team just starving for team building or was it just a pleasant diversion from the weekly retrospective?  It could be both.  I’ve found most teams believe in team building but, besides going to lunch, no one really knows how to do it.

In the weeks ahead, I’m going to spend time coming up with team building activities that circumvent the remote location issues and move them into the monthly or bi-monthly rotation of team retrospectives.  Besides, what better place to learn about your teammates and use the time wisely given to teams then in a retrospective?


Terry T