Cool Retrospectives - Self-organization

A great way to foster self organization would be through a self-organized retrospective.

Scope: let team members make progress in self organization and to gain more trust in their super powers.

Step 1. Prepare post-its, markers, flip chart, balls or anything you normally use in retrospectives.

Step 2. Go through the last retrospective - 5 mins

Step 3. Have a 10 minutes conversation on why we do retrospectives and let each team member say what Retrospective represents to him/her, as well as what are their key expectations from this meeting.

Step 4. Scrum Master leaves the room and the team continues the retrospective themselves - 40 mins

Step 5. SM returns and let everybody say round robin what they learned from the retrospective - 5 mins

Team are faced to the 'on your own' situation unexpectedly and need to adapt. It is a first lesson for them and it is important to learn where they stay and together to agree what they are still missing or need more help towards achieving self-organization.

Great exercise to experiment, brings you lots of insights and it is also a great way the SM realizes if he has been doing a good job or not.

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