Making the Grade

Here is an idea I had to reflect a bit more deeply on the stories. It's for 'Part 2 - Gather Data' if you follow Esther Derby's 5 steps. The idea is the team can 'Gather data' by reviewing the stories in the sprint using categories of their own choosing. Might be worth doing a check-in exercise before, and also you can use the data to generate ideas as you see fit.

1. Intro & 2. Categories

First, together we are going to choose the categories for which to score the stories in the sprint. You can suggest a few categories such as Communication, Planning, and Complexity to get them going, but also allow them to add others if they want to. If there has been something especially contentious.. you can spend a bit of time getting everyone to reflect on some topics before you start.

3. Dot Voting

Once the categories are good foreveryone, get the team to dot vote on them. (E.g. each person has 3 votes, and they put them on the categories they wish to vote for). The one with the most votes can be used in the next section. (End up with 2-3 categories)

4. Scoring & 5. Commenting

Next, put the topics at the top and arrange them like a matrix. Each team member should put a score (e.g. 0 Poor - 5 Excellent) against each story/category depending on how well they think the team did. Also a column at the end for everyone to add any additional contextual comments. Spend the next bit of time silently scoring the topics for each story and any comments if needed.

6.. Finally

Spend time reflecting. As the team summarises, they use the data to reflect on things they might want to talk about in the next part of the retro.