How PacMan can foster critical thinking in Retrospectives

This article speaks about how the team can benefit from templates that trigger critical thinking to develop constructive, actionable outcomes during Retrospectives.

Hereupon I bring a combination of PAC-MAN and What, So What, Now What template to support the teams in having constructive discussions and creating feasible, actionable improvements.

When designing a Retrospective my focus is always to bring in moving or powerful questions that can help the team to focus more on what can be done rather than ranting about the problem that is out of their reach.

Below is one such custom template I tried to experiment with by combining two activities PAC-MAN and What, So What, Now What that indeed complemented each other. The second activity tried to build up the conversation thread based on the topics discussed during the first activity. Throughout the Retrospective conversations many topics surface. It is a good practice to let the team vote on the most critical topic that they would like to resolve at hand. The other topics are important and some behavior or process changes do get conceived without explicit action items. I do not encourage teams to brainstorm and try to solve all the issues that get mentioned. Often taking too many decisions clouds the team's plan on what exactly needs to be done. In such a situation, everyone walks out with a separate improvement goal based on their own biases.

Retrospective Template — 75min-90min

Check-in — 5min

A quick check-in from the facilitator and following up on the progress of action items from the last Retrospective. Without fail set a timer to remind the team this is just check-in and if they have important details to share with respect to it, they can bring them up during the Retrospective discussion.

Energiser — 5min-7min

Every team member is expected to share a fun fact with the team which they are not aware of.

This was based on the feedback provided during the last retro, “may be a bit more personal connect will help the team” .

PacMan — 30min–45min

PAC-MAN is one of the video games that all or most of the team members can relate to. The highlight of this activity is “Remaining Lives” which makes you think not just about the failure or blocker, but helps you take the next step in identifying what could you do differently to turn this failure into success. It helps in having constructive team conversations rather than ranting or venting. The team might also derive interesting action items or ways of working based on the inputs added in the “Remaining Lives” section.

Ghosts — In the Ghosts section of the retrospective board, you identify the things in the last sprint that blocked you from achieving certain goals or have held you back.

Diamonds — These represent bonus rewards. What was a pleasant surprise/bonus during the process and how did it come to be?

Remaining lives — Remaining lives are aspects of the process that you would like to do differently in the next sprint to avoid failure. This section helps you to think one step ahead of what did not work. It makes you think about what you could have done differently to make this work.

Fruits — Fruits are the achievements of this sprint. What made you feel successful? What goals did you achieve?

Introducing the retrospective activity to the team, start with explaining what the 4 areas the team members need to think about to pen down their inputs. If possible, give examples to support the case which helps the team in getting a clear indication of what they are expected to do.

Example: (Remaining lives) A certain story was flagged as blocked due to dependency on another team. What you could have done differently, in order to unblock yourself in such situations?

In my experience 5 to 7 min are enough for the team to create stickies, once that is done every individual share their thoughts behind the inputs provided by them and the team member discuss them.

P.S: As a facilitator I create more stickies/notes based on the discussion that the team has. These can be categorised as cause of the issue, important information about the topic, how individuals felt about it, connected issues, suggestions and so on. Adding this information support the on going discussion and it is not missed out.

Voting — 5min

Ask the team to vote and identify the most important issue they would like to address at this moment. In order to create feasible action items to improve the highlighted area.

BREAK — 5min

If it is a 75 to 90 min session the team appreciates a small break.

What, So What, Now What — 20min–25min

The next connecting activity is WHAT, SO WHAT, NOW WHAT

These questions for enabling action are grounded in the “What? — So What? — Now What?” question framework provides leaders, facilitators, and groups with an easily remembered way to have a meaningful conversation that leads to action.

What is the most critical issue you would like to address? — Understanding the event or issue. You get this problem statement from the previous activity followed by voting. So What are the implications of this issue? — Making sense of the facts and implications. Some of the points are already covered when this topic is already discussed in the first activity. Making it easy for the participants to build the conversation thread deeper. Now What can we do to improvise, to get better at it? — Identifying the course of action or innovative solutions and defining owners. This is the combined outcome of both activities.

Outcome

Without getting into the details of the discussion when I facilitated this Retrospective template, the outcome of it was educating the team about MR’s (Merge Request) without reinventing the wheel. A lot of emotions surfaced during this discussion. How team members felt blocked and isolated. How the extensive feedback was demotivating and it could be good if these details are discussed during refinements and not argued upon in MR’s.

Critical thinking did help the team to focus on the positive aspects such as what could have been done better in order to improve or the simple question “Now What” to create action items. The team scheduled brainstorming and experience-sharing sessions for MR’s. They even decided to document this for existing and new team members to set expectations and help everyone align on the team MR-related agreements and decisions.

The most interesting feedback that was received after the Retrospective was: A lot of emotions surfaced during this discussion and it will be great if the Retrospective is done at the end of the day so we could recover or lighten the mood and don’t need to rush back to our work. In short spend more time with each other and acknowledge feelings.

Asking for feedback is very crucial to make a difference. Feedback is not the truth but a circumstantial response to the situation. Considering the perspective from which this feedback was provided helps to improve the overall experience.