If you’ve followed my writing, you know that I’m enamored with the wisdom often shared by John Cutler. Well, it’s happened again…
I found the following post on LinkedIn where John shared his thoughts around reframing retrospectives to be more positive. And that resonated deeply with my thoughts of late around the place for
Positive Psychology
Positivity
Strengths-based approaches
Appreciative Inquiry
In agile contexts.
I thought it was an interesting exercise to color-code them according to the following:
See what you think about John’s ideas and my categorization…
Lots of retrospectives start with a prompt that focuses on "problems". What is broken? Where did we mess up during the last sprint? A different approach is to brainstorm opportunities. Don't linger on what's broken. Where do we have opportunities to … / how might we….
It was such a good perspective that I found there was very little I could add to it. Perhaps with the exception that there could be more opportunities around team culture, psychological safety, diversity and inclusion, empowerment, and trust.
But that’s just a nit.
What do you think of John’s list? And, are you bringing enough Opportunity, Positivity, and Art of the Possible to your retrospectives? Food for thought.
Stay agile my friends,
Bob.