Retrospectives are one of our favorite Agile practices. We find incredible value in the act of coming together to reflect on work we delivered after each sprint, share feedback to “determine what succeeded and what could be improved,” and agree on what high-priority action items to tackle next.
In Agile, a retrospective (or 'retro') is an efficient meeting that project teams hold after completing a crucial stage of a project. Retrospectives allow Agile teams to move quickly without losing the feedback loop and honest reflection that are needed to continue iterating at a rapid pace.
Retrospectives, like team meetings in general, come with problems—and that’s also very true when you are part of a remote company like ours. As distributed teams, we need to work hard for retros to stay an efficient and valuable use of our time; we also need to make sure that everybody gets the chance to participate and share in the learning experience.
Within Hotjar, different departments use different retro templates and methods depending on team size, project scope, and tool of choice. One of our best templates for a no-frills, effective, and fast retro is the 3-column Trello board that our Customer Success Managers (CSMs) use, so we’re sharing their template and explaining how it works.
The 3-column template requires all retro participants to list and share their ideas on what went well and what did not go well during the previous work iteration (for example the previous week), discuss and share feedback, and agree on what actions need to be taken moving forward.
This method works well when you and your team need to:
We created a copy of our retrospective template with instructions, so you can take it and start using it as your own right now:
Click here to get yourself a copy of this in Trello!
When it’s retro time, all participants join the call (we tend to use Google Hangouts or Zoom) and individually open the 3-column Trello board.
After greeting each other, the team members put themselves on mute (while still on the video call) for 5-10 minutes and start adding cards to the ‘what went well’ and ‘what didn’t go well’ columns in Trello.
The ideas on each card can range from very personal to business-specific; as an example, here are a few from recent CSM retros:
By the end of these 5-10 minutes, each person should have successfully summarized a week’s/iteration’s worth of success or lack thereof and should be ready to discuss each idea or issue with the rest of the team.
🏆Pro tip: instead of wasting time scrambling to remember what happened and is worth mentioning, spend the first 1-2 minutes refreshing your memory by looking into your calendar at meetings you had, emails you exchanged, actions you listed in the project management tool you use, etc.
Bonus point for taking notes throughout the week, so all you need is a copy-paste job on retro day.
When all ideas are written, one of the team members shares their screen so everybody can see and be on the (literal) same page, and the reviewing session can begin.
Which column do you start from? It depends on your team’s preference. Some teams prefer to begin their retro by celebrating the positives first; our CSMs often start from the ‘things that went wrong’ column, since that’s where they find the most valuable/useful talking points.
Which card(s) do you start from? The approach depends on team size and number of cards:
Whenever a card is pulled up, its author gives a brief backstory of what happened. If required, they then open up the discussion to the rest of the team, who might offer a solution or complementary point of view: it’s not uncommon for more than one person to bring up the same topic(s) during a retrospective, so this is a good opportunity to exchange feedback and look at a topic from different angles.
Occasionally, people interact in writing by adding comments directly onto a card. This option becomes particularly valuable in the long-term if you ever want to revisit any of the cards in a few weeks or months.
Not all cards will have an action associated with them: in the example above, sometimes it’s enough that a topic gets acknowledged by the rest of the team. In other cases, follow-up actions get assigned to a person who then becomes responsible for their delivery.
🏆Pro tip: for a time-efficient retro, have a member of the team volunteer as a facilitator, keeping track of time, and making sure the conversation stays on topic.
There are many ways to run a retrospective, from the very basic to the really jazzed up—and that’s before you even look at the Lego retrospective, where you build a Lego animal to represents your feelings about work in 8 bricks or less (!).
The 3-column template we shared is one we recommend for teams who need a fast and efficient method to bring to light issues and opportunities + get actionable points and fixes to work on. So we made a template for you to check out, copy, and try. Enjoy!
Want to run a quick, no-frills retrospective with your remote team? Here is the 3-column Trello retrospective template we use.
