Agile Pandemic Retrospective Dynamics
Get to know your team’s mental health and avoid burnouts
Introduction
The 2020s was one of the craziest years in human history, challenging everyone to step out of the comfort zone due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this time of uncertainty, we need to what out for those we care to and hold the breath while the world is getting a fix with vaccines around. While we’re not safe yet, is important to understand ourselves and those around us in order to solve problems throughout the time they appear.
In tech teams running scrum, retrospective meetings occur at the end of a sprint to understand the team deliveries and check what went well or doesn't. The overall idea of what to look for is defined below by Scrun.org.
The Scrum Team inspects how the last Sprint went with regards to individuals, interactions, processes, tools, and their Definition of Done.
So, understand the individuals is a key point to achieve the sprint goals.
In order to help to correlate the pandemic moment and the individual's mental health in a team, we could use the pandemic retrospective meeting to understand our threats, strengths, and a future to dream of. Check it out below.
The Pandemic Retrospective Dynamics
The dynamics idea is an analogy with an epidemic curve. The curve gets higher when the number of cases increases and slows down when our body creates strong defense mechanisms.
So, starting the dynamics the facilitator should explain the major points: defenses, threats, and perfect future.
Team Defenses
Team defenses are about what are our strengths. What we have done well in the past sprint that is facilitating to achieve our goals. When our strengths are strong enough, the pandemic will not spread and our team will survive together. Also, this is the topic to tell what our team can do to increase the immunological system helping to achieve the sprint objectives.
What is helping to spread the virus?
This topic is about what we are not doing well/weakness that is not helping us to achieve the goals.
Not only collecting weakness but also this is the perfect topic to ask your team what are the effects of the pandemic in our team’s deliveries. Comment about working for home, zoom fatigue, burnout, and try to correlate if anyone on the team is needing help. The facilitator here should create a safe environment telling everyone that this is not to blame but to understand the current problems and how could we overcome them together. Be trustworthy.
Perfect world and a normal life
Here, the facilitator should balance things up. This is the place that we dream of together. The perfect world is about what we want to achieve, the things we miss and we want them back (happy hours, hugs, get-togethers), a good product to final users, and so on. Try to have fun with your team and imagine the good things to come.
Collecting actions points
After explaining the topics above, give your team some time to write the answers (the time is up to you, ~15min works great).
When the clock stops, ask your team about what topic to start and read everyone's answers. Ask them for clarification if needed and address action points in order to propose solutions for your team issues.
If some topics like working from home, zoom fatigue or burnout shows up, great! This is the time that everyone could propose solutions and ideas. Use the team support to create a safe environment and discuss how to overcome it. If necessary, ask for professional medical health.
Before finishing up, review the items with your team.
Reviewing the last sprint is an important dynamics to understand the previous problems and learning from them. When we create an environment where we learn and grow together the results are extraordinary.
Be safe :)
