6 tips for beginners: facilitating an agile retrospective

The moderation and design of retrospectives is often left to trained Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches, who already have a lot of experience with various workshop formats.

In many companies, however, team members also have to step into the role of a moderator from time to time - which is a good thing. Because moderation is a skill that can be learned and trained and helps in various areas.

If you are with the Format of the retrospective are not familiar in themselves, it might be worth taking a look at this presentation. Here are our tips if you are moderating a retrospective for the first time:

Tip 1 to moderate a retrospective: Question whether you are neutral enough

With this tip I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the role of a moderator has certain preconditions regarding neutrality. If you act as the opinion leader or leader of a team, you will exert a special influence on the team as a moderator. Even if you (subjectively) neutral the retrospective or similar. moderate. Alone the anticipation of your reaction by participants is an effect that unfortunately cannot be excluded.

A moderator should therefore be a neutral person who is recognized by the team in this role. If this role cannot be filled by a Scrum Master or Agile Coach, it is often a good option to pass the moderation role on to the team in order to give everyone the opportunity to slip into this role and learn from it.

Especially if you as a manager are supposed to moderate a retrospective, actively encourage team members to take over the moderation of retrospectives. Or create a pull effect - after all, this actively invests in the further development of moderation skills (not only of retrospectives).

Tip 2 for moderating a retro: Prepare the stage with the check-in

As a moderator, you should take an active role, but that doesn’t make you the main actor in retro. At least you shouldn’t be. Your task is to stage team members as actors and to prepare them for the stage.

In this sense, the check-in acts as a warm-up. So make sure that everyone is actively involved in the check-in and that there is a positive atmosphere in the conversation. If you successfully complete this step, the further course of the conversation will moderate itself.

Here are a few examples of check-in questions that you can use to get started with retro:

• What is your high- or lowlight from last week?
• On a scale of 0 for bad to 10 for great - how are you feeling right now?

Otherwise, there are of course various check-in generatorsto inspire you.

Tip 3 for moderating a retrospective: Master the idioms of moderation

In the moderation of workshops there are a few recurring patterns, for which there are well-tried formulations that you can adopt and adapt for yourself:

One person (Peter) speaks continuously: 

• “Thank you, Peter. Let’s see what other perspectives we have on the topic. How do the others see this point?”

Discussion between 2 people: 

• “I have the feeling that this topic only concerns the two of you right now. I’ll note it down and suggest you continue the discussion later as a pair. What do you think?”

Discussion takes too long: 

• “Are you sure it makes sense to continue the discussion here, given the late hour? We still have two more topics on the agenda with X and Y.”

You can find more examples of such idioms for moderating your retrospective, for example right here. As I said: It is important to adapt the wording so that it suits you and that it the psychological security of the team.

Tip 4: Ask for feedback

Everyone will be considerate when you step into the role of a moderator at a retrospective for the first time. So take the opportunity to openly ask the participants for feedback afterwards - both in the group and in individual discussions.

For example, if you are unsure in some situations whether you reacted correctly, ask participants afterwards how they perceived the situation.

This way you maximize your learning effect and are on the way to becoming a top retro moderator.

Tip 5 for moderating the retrospective: Select a simple format

Especially for the first retros, you should choose a simple, well-structured format to moderate the retrospective. For example, the classics - “Keep, stop, start”, “Mad, sad, glad” or, in the next step, the sailboat retrospective. You can also find concrete inspiration in these three simple and interactive retro methods . There are many methods for retrospectives that are very demanding in moderation and require strict timeboxing.

A classic among the retro methods is, for example, the “Sailboat Retrospective”, which is also suitable for beginners. If you feel like it, take a look at it in our tool ( no login required ). Maybe you can try them out:

• ⚓️ Your anchor: What holds us back?
• 🦈🧊 Your shark/iceberg: Which dangers or obstacles approach us?
• 💨 Your tailwind: What drives us forward?
• 🏝💰 Your paradise: What achievement or milestones are we working towards?

Tip 6 for moderating the retrospective: Try out Echometer some day

A great support in moderating your retrospective are existing retro tools. They can take a lot of work off your hands - including moderation, timeboxing, but also qualitative derivation of measures.

In particular, I want to mention the retrospective tool Echometer name, which I helped to develop myself. It combines insights from psychology with agile best practices to get the most out of team health checks & retros for team development. 

We give you concrete hints in the tool on how to derive good measures - and it can be used both online remotely and offline.

You can design a retrospective without a login from you or your team - the tool takes care of the entire structuring and helps with timeboxing etc.

 

You can use this button to open the tool, choose your retrospective questions and invite the team via a link (there are  more than 30 kickass retrospective  Methods possible, incl. the Mario Kart Retro, Marathon Retro & the Elon Musk Retro):