How do I get more action items from retrospectives?
If you want to get more action items from retrospectives, you need to do two things well: first, make enough relevant problems visible, and second, consciously open up the solution space in the team.
First collect problems that are worth solving
If your team has difficulty addressing problems openly, this is often the first bottleneck on the way to meaningful actions from the retrospective.
The following approaches will help you gain more insights in the “Gather Data” step:
- Conduct a survey before the retrospective: This gives individual team members more time to reflect on their work.
- Allow anonymous feedback: This can lower the barrier to speaking openly. At the same time, it reduces the pressure to formulate each piece of feedback perfectly.
- Use diverse and creative retrospective formats. If you only ever ask “What went well?” and “What went badly?”, it’s often not very stimulating. Varied formats help to avoid retro fatigue and increase participation (see also Retro fatigue ). To avoid this retro fatigue and keep the team’s engagement in the retro high, our list of retro formats is also helpful: Overview of creative retrospective methods
If you would like to further improve the moderation of your retro, take a look at our eBook (free of course): eBook on retro moderation
In the eBook you will find more tips on how to get better conversations and thus more good action items out of retrospectives.
Then widely open the solution space of possible action items
Once the retrospective has made a good selection of prioritized problems visible, the next step is to collect as many ideas as possible for potential measures.
Just as you shouldn’t prematurely evaluate feedback in the retro, you shouldn’t immediately evaluate action item ideas either. As a moderator, it makes sense to openly explore the solution space for each prioritized problem.
- Ask hypothetical “What if…” questions to stimulate creative ideas.
- Write down possible action items visibly so that the team can build on them and combine them.
- The more ideas you collect for a problem, the higher the chance that a really good next step will emerge from it in the end.
- For every idea for a measure, question what the underlying assumption is for the root cause of the problem. You can often visually group the ideas for measures according to the suspected root causes.
If you are also looking for concrete practical examples, you can find further reading here: Tips and examples for good measures from retrospectives
Consciously lower the hurdle for an action item
If your team can’t agree on the cause or the best solution for an issue, it’s often better not to leave the retro with a half-baked definition for an action item. Instead, the issue should become a clear follow-up step, for example: “Breakout Session on [Topic]”.
The breakout session is a good next step to further work on an important problem without prematurely committing to a concrete solution in the retrospective. The discussion in the retro already creates a good basis for this.
- The breakout session gives those directly involved more time to prepare their perspectives.
- The team doesn’t have to spend the entire retro time in an unproductive fundamental discussion where only a few can contribute.
- The result can be fed back to the team later, for example in the next retro or at an agreed time.
In the end, what’s important is not the perfect solution in the retro itself, but that you have a clear next step that really takes you forward.
If you also want to focus on the quality of the individual measures, read this FAQ entry: How do I get better action items in retrospectives?