Seeing a Balanced View Retrospective
This Retrospective technique is focused on visualising individual votes, opinions or feelings. By using a simple visual metaphor of a see-saw you can capture the essence of the teams position and quickly highlight weather things are out out of balance or weighted evenly.
I recommend creating your own labels for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's good to identify what problem you need solved, and use the most appropriate language to help that diagnosis. Secondly, it's important to facilitate in your language, colloquial cultural style that matches the team you're with. It's authentic, and people respond better, open up more when you are authentically yourself.
Some examples of using the same retrospective visual for different purposes.
Capturing the mood Retrospective;
Often a team can get into a slump and stay there. Be transparent about feelings in the workplace is hard. So in a safe space doing a simple visualisation exercise can help them "get out of the feeling" and take a new perspective on what's going on. The below excerise could include a step to write down why you feel the way you do but sometimes it's good to just 'air the feelings first'.
1. Ask the team to quietly consider how they feel about the past iteration (or event)
2. Place a stickie on the scale where it best represents their feeling
3. Acknowledge the distribution or weighting of the stickies
4. Go into discussion and diagnoses withe team
5. Facilitate them to come to a point of actionable agreement
Identify the distribution of performance retrospective.
The purpose of looking into performance is to discover what wrong or what could be improved.
1. Ask the team to quietly consider their recent work, and jot down their why
2. Place a stickie on the scale where it best represents their efforts
3. Acknowledge the distribution or weighting of the stickies
4. Go into discussion and diagnoses withe team
5. Facilitate them to come to a point of actionable agreement about what to do better next time