Set the Stage with Check-ins

Coincidence is a funny thing. Have you noticed that some topic/issue/concept/activity will come up in your life, then for a while you bump into it everywhere? Happens to me all the time. Lately, I’ve been bumping into new ideas for check-in activities, and reminders about familiar ones.

Retrospectives

Do Don't Try

Martin Jul writes about a retrospective activity in the post “Retrospectives - Adapting to Reality.” He describes an interesting process for highlighting issues in the Generating Insights part of a retrospective session.

Retrospective Short Subjects II

In Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great!, Esther Derby and I include a collection of activities we called, “Short Subjects.”

After Gathering Data, these useful activities provide relatively quick ways to review event, effort, and response data; reflect on the implications of the data; and Generate Insights about team experiences.

Teams Retrospectives

Generative Collaboration Model

Derek Neighbor’s post about Patrick Leoncioni’s team dysfunctions model prompted me to share a model I developed many years ago for work with self-directing teams. Esther Derby and I use the model as part of our "Secrets of Agile Teamwork: Beyond Technical Skills" workshop.

Agile Teams

Mr. Squiggle

Nick Oostvogel describes a creative activity to revive boring retrospectives and tell the shared story of the project (Gather Data). He calls it Mr. Squiggle.

Agile Retrospectives

Dealing with the Unexpected

An Agile coach contacted me to discuss an issue on his team. One of the critical contractors on his team had left the project for another assignment, unexpectedly, on two week’s notice, just before an important release. Oh my! The coach described his initial shock and dismay. He wanted ideas for how to handle the unexpected loss of a team member with his team. Together we developed a list of five actions that would help deal with this impediment.

1. The Agile coach could contact the contracting agency to give them feedback on the impact on the project of...

Agile

FRIM-redux

About a year ago, I wrote post on FRIM, a new activity for gathering data for the work of retrospectives.

Retrospectives