Retrospectives are reflective!

Retrospectives are reflective!

 

Retrospectives are the team’s chance to make their life better. Process of making the team’s life better may mean confronting hard truths and changing how work is done. Hard conversations require trust and safety. Trust and safety are attributes that are hard to generate remote, especially if team members have never met each other. Facilitation and techniques tailored to distributed teams are needed to get real value from retrospectives when the team is distributed.

  1. Bring team members together. Joint retrospectives will serve a number of purposes including building relationships and trust. The combination of deeper relationships and trust will help team members tackle harder conversations when team members are apart.
  2. Use collaboration tools. Many retrospective techniques generate lists and then ask participants to vote. Listing techniques work best when participants see what is being listed rather than trying to remember or reference any notes that have been taken. I have used free mind-mapping tools (such as FreeMind) and screen-sharing software to make sure everyone can see the “list.”
  3. Geographic distances can mask culture differences. The facilitator needs to make sure he or she is aware of cultural differences (some cultures find it harder to expose and discuss problems). Differences in culture should be shared with the team before the retrospective begins. Consider adding a few minutes before beginning retrospective to discuss cultural issues if your team has members in or from different counties or if there are glaring cultural differences. Note the same ideas can be used to address personality differences.
  4. Use more than one facilitator. Until team members get comfortable with each other consider having a second (or third) facilitator to support the retrospective. When using multiple facilitators ensure that the facilitators understand their roles and are synchronized on the agenda.
  5. Consider assigning pre-retrospective homework. Poll team members for comments and issues before the retrospective session. The issues and comments can be shared to seed discussions, provide focus or just break the ice.

All of these suggestions presume that the retrospective has stable tele/video communication tools and the meeting time has been negotiated. If participation due to attendance, first ask what the problem is and if the problem is that attending a retrospective in the middle of the night is hard then consider an alternate meeting time (share the time zone pain).

Retrospectives are critical to help teams grow and become more effective. Retrospectives in distributed teams are harder than in co-located teams. The answer to being harder should be to use these techniques or others to facilitate communication and interaction. The answer should never be to abandon retrospectives, leave remote members out of the meeting or to hold separate but equal retrospectives. Remember, one team and one retrospective but that only work well when members trust each other and feel safe to share their ideas for improvement.