The perks of a Team Radar Retrospective

Three non-gender people in a room. Two are sat and one is standing explaining a chart.
Summary
  • The author shares an experience using Team Radar as a format for Sprint Retrospectives, aiming to make the activity more engaging for the team.
  • A template was prepared with eight topics mixing soft skills (collaboration, partner contact, fun) and technical aspects (technical debt, definition of done, refactoring, scrum, design), rated individually by the team on a 1 to 10 scale.
  • Individual ratings were consolidated into a spreadsheet and displayed as a team radar on a big screen, sparking discussions, key takeaways, and action items.
  • The team enjoyed the format and suggested new topics for future radars, leading to a decision to repeat the retrospective style.

One of my favorite parts of the PM job is to search and try new and fun ways of conducting Sprint Retrospectives. =]

Sprint Retrospective is an opportunity for the team to inspect itself and create a plan for improvements to be enacted during the next Sprint.

I like to think that when we start the retrospective the team is feeling like: “Yay! How are we going to tackle retrospective today? I’m so excited!” instead of “Oh okay, we’re doing that again.”

Interested to have a big picture of what’s happening inside the team? Let’s get to it!

About Team Radar

Team Radar is very similar to the Competency Wheel. Radars are great because it presents data in a visual way, helping the teams understanding the present moment through a variety of topics. Since it is a visual tool, you can easily map “hot” topics and open the channel to start the discussions around it.

Prep work

I’ve created a template with the topics I selected for this first Radar and printed copies for all the team. I selected some soft topics (collaboration, partner contact, fun) and mixed it up with technical topics (technical debt, definition of done, refactoring, scrum and design).

I also created a spreadsheet to record each one of the team’s inputs and quickly have the ability to assess the most important topics to discuss.

Conducting Team Radar

Start of retrospective

I’ve started the retrospective by sharing with the team what we would be doing and created a shared understanding regarding each one of the listed topics. We defined what would represent the smallest and highest values for each one of them.

Filling out the team radar

Using Radar’s printed version I asked the team to individually rate the topics based on what we defined for each one of them. We’ve used the scale from 1 to 10 and everyone marked down their answers. Refactoring and Technical Debt were the only ones that the smaller the value the better (less refactoring/rework, less technical debt for whatever reason).

Connecting the dots

Once everyone was done with rating the topics, I’ve asked them to connect the dots from the eight axis. Now everyone had their individual radar. It was so fun because some of them used their creativity to fill the radar out as you can check below:

Taking it to the next level

We then transposed all this rich data into the spreadsheet and the result was the team’s radar as follows:

I displayed the team Radar on a big screen and the conversation about the most relevant topics started. We documented the key takeaways and generated some important action items from there.

Conclusions

The team had fun and I did too! It generated a lot of great discussions about the defined topics. The team also had the chance to propose some other topics to be discussed next time – this means we will do another radar retrospective for sure.

References

Retrospective: Do the team radar

Retrospective: Using the Team Radar

FAQ

What is a Sprint Retrospective?

A Sprint Retrospective is an opportunity for the team to inspect itself and create a plan for improvements to be enacted during the next Sprint.

What is Team Radar?

Team Radar is a retrospective tool similar to the Competency Wheel. It presents data in a visual way, helping teams understand the present moment through a variety of topics, making it easier to map 'hot' topics and start discussions around them.

What topics were selected for the Team Radar?

The Radar mixed soft topics (collaboration, partner contact, fun) with technical topics (technical debt, definition of done, refactoring, scrum, and design).

How is the Team Radar conducted?

The retrospective starts by sharing what will be done and creating a shared understanding of each topic, including what represents the smallest and highest values. Team members individually rate each topic on a scale from 1 to 10 on a printed Radar, then connect the dots across the eight axes to form their individual radar. For Refactoring and Technical Debt, smaller values are better.

What happens after the team fills out the Radar?

All inputs are transposed into a spreadsheet to generate the team's combined Radar, which is displayed on a big screen. The team discusses the most relevant topics, documents key takeaways, and generates action items.

About the author.

Roberta Oliveira
Roberta Oliveira

Serial Ben & Jerry's eater. I love to hike and have fun with my daughter Nina. Huge Friends (the tv series) fan - Oh. My. God!