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The exercise is super easy to run and consists of three consecutive phases. This is a great tool if you want to engage your team in a more in-depth, critical analysis of the completed project. As for the negatives, they’re great material for a rapid How Might We session on how to avoid them for the next project. For the positives you can run a quick “Idea into Action” round, ensuring you keep up the positive outcomes for the next rounds. Optional: If time permits, and you want to make sure your Retrospective is turbo effective, we highly suggest you pair it up with another round of exercises that will help you determine what to do with the things you uncovered during the Retrospective. You now have a comprehensive overview of tall the aspects that went well, and all the aspects that would need some improving the next time around.
![sailboat team retrospective instruction sailboat team retrospective instruction](http://www.exam-pm.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/speedboat03.jpg)
After the time is up, gather all the stickies that got voted on.It’s up to you whether you want this vote to be more of a Heat Map (meaning unlimited voting dots), a Straw Poll (with personalized voting dots), or a simple Dot Voting session (where you carefully measure the amount of dots every participant has to narrow down the amount of stickies)
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Set the timer to a few minutes (5-10, depending on the amount of sticky notes you’ve gathered), ask your team to read through both the positive and the negative comments their teammates shared, and vote on the things that jump out to them.Now it's time to reflect on these learnings and take action to ensure future improvements.
![sailboat team retrospective instruction sailboat team retrospective instruction](https://assets.website-files.com/63087c3e1f785b076cd9c4cd/64134bf1f5233cabef39e221_Sailboat%20Retrospective%20OG%20image-2.png)
They’ve seen their colleagues score and they have had time to consider the positive and negative aspects of the project. So far, the group has posted their initial judgements on the project.Repeat the same with the negative aspects for the ‘-’ column.Once the time is up, each person presents their positives and puts their sticky notes directly in the ‘+’ column that you drew up earlier.Set the timer to 5 minutes and ask your team to write down all the positive things about the project, with one positive thing per sticky note. Now it’s time to move to the next phase in the retrospective: summarising the positives and negatives in a project.Once everyone has put up their answers, you will have a nice visual overview of the groups overall impression of each question. So if the sticky note says six, stick it under number six on the scale. Once the time is up, ask each person to come forward and stick their sticky note on the scale under the number they chose.A rule of thumb is to give 1 minute per 2 questions. Time will vary depending on how many questions you have. Read out all your questions and ask the team to silently note their rating (a number between 1-10) on a sticky note.You should have something that looks like this: Under the scale, draw a line from 1 through to 10, where 1 is low and 10 is high. Write each number left to right, with a small space between each. Underneath each question on the whiteboard and draw a scale from 1 to 10 under each question.These questions could include: “How valuable were the outcomes of this project for the client?”, “How smooth was the process of working together as a team?”, “How manageable did the deadlines and expectations feel?” etc. It’s a good idea to have a set of key questions that you go through after each significant project. Before the Retrospective starts, write down the list of questions you want to gain the group’s feedback on.If your project was more of a bumpy ride, retrospective is the perfect opportunity to turn past mistakes into learning opportunities! Either way, a classic retrospective is a great tool and should be part of every team’s toolbox! If the project has been successful, it gives you one more chance to celebrate the team, internalize the success, and give credit where it's due. It not only allows you to take stock of what’s been done and achieved, but also gives your team a sense of closure. This exercise is great for evaluating a big piece of work or project that has involved many people.