Yesterday I did something I have never done before in my 5 years or so as a scrum master…. I held a retrospective outside! My current team are based right in the center of London and are lucky enough to have a park right outside of the building. Yesterday was one of the handful of lovely sunny days we get in a British Summer so I made the suggestion we go outside. Here are some pictures

retro1 retro2 retro3 retro4

The team seemed to really respond to being outside and a very open and honest conversation about the team and the sprint they had just completed was had. The format of the retro was

  • Intro – Movie review the sprint
  • Gather Insights – 4 L’s – Liked, Lacked, Learned, Longed For
  • Decide what to do – Actions were gathered as we discussed the 4 L’s and were summarised and evaluated as to whether they can be achieved in a sprint
  • Closing – Thanked the team for their attendance and promised to buy them an ice cream next time we do a retro in the sun!

A couple of things I noted for the outside retro that you may want to consider

  • London is noisy! We had Ambulances, cars, lorries and all sorts making noise during the retro which meant that sometimes it was hard to hear
  • We had a dog who kept coming over for us to throw its ball to him, note: throw a ball once and a dog will always come back to you!
  • Ensure you have something to stick post-its or cards to to take back, i had a notebook i captured all of the output onto so i could summarise when back in the office