Speedboat - Agile-Tools Style

The Speedboat

Do you know this workshop often used for Scrum's retrospective events ? If not, it is a workshop that helps you and your team reflect on the things that helps you, those that slows you down, those that threaten your progress and on what you successfully achieved.

I created this fun and colourful version during the first lockdown of the pandemic in France, in 2020. I wanted a very personnal version that could combine the efficiency of this workshop with my humor and graphic style. Since it always was appreciated by the teams I worked with, I decided to share it.

Downloadable and playable on the French website Agile-Tools.fr and now to all the Miroverse community.

Who to use it with ?

With a team, being an agile one or not, but it could also work for your own personnal reflection. The ideal size for the group is around 10. It could work with larger groups, but you will need to use smaller stickies and a timebox a bit longer.

When to use it ?

To reflect on ways of working at the end of a sprint or any relevant period of time.

How to use it ?

Start with the Happymeter moodboard :

Everyone puts a sticky on the Happymeter to express their feeling and explains if desired.

Then, run the speedboat :

1 - Let people create their stickies, with one idea per sticky, on the speedboat part.

• Wind in our sails : What did push / help us to succeed ?

• Anchored sailboat : What did slow us down in our journey ?

• Sea monster : What prevented our sucess ? What were the dangers ?

• Dream island : What did we achieve ? What went well in the end ?

2- Let people explain a bit what they meant in their stickies and regroup them by theme if relevant.

3 - Make the team vote to select the most important(s) themes on which they want to find a concrete improvement action(s) to take.

4 - Spend some time on those themes to discuss and - most importantly - decide altogether of measurable and concrete improvement action(s) to take. Each improvement action goes on a sticky in the Treasure Chest section.

5 - Within the improvement actions proposed, select a few that the team feels confident with achieving during the next weeks and that will improve yourselves or your ways of working.

6 - Close your speedboat by asking feedback on it's value to your team ! A nice way to do it is a ROTI, or a second row on the Happymeter ;)

Credits :

Special huge thanks to my two buddies Florian Cassini & Laurent Dlus for the playable French online version with the Classic Retro tool on Agile-Tools.fr.