Learn how to facilitate the What Went Well, What Didn't Go Well sticky note technique.
Take Retrium's Technique Quiz to figure out which retrospective technique best fits the needs of your next retrospective.
This is the most commonly used technique in Retrium, and we recommend it as a great starting point. It works great for newly formed teams and those that have worked together for years. Regardless of your level of experience with agile, this is always an effective conversation starter.
You can discuss what went well and what didn't for the last iteration (or project) or about a specific topic like living up to your core values or team communication. It's an incredibly powerful way to focus and facilitate the discussion and allows the team to create a list of concrete actions it can take to enable continuous improvement.
Facilitating the Process
The process of running this type of retrospective in Retrium works like this:
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Everyone brainstorms ideas to add to sticky notes under the "what went well" and "what didn't go well" columns in the "think" phase
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The team then organizes sticky notes they with to discuss together during the "group" stage
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Everyone privately votes on which notes or groups they think are important to discuss during the "vote" phase
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Retrium organizes the most important topics in order of votes during the "discuss" step, where your team can choose to discuss one or more items and turn the next steps into specific action items
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The team can then reflect on the effectiveness of the retrospective as a whole during the "close" phase, and your team can choose to review those results before concluding the meeting