Superman in the team: make your retrospectives more exciting

The retrospective is the Agile ceremony where your team thinks of ways to improve. It is crucial that you have them regularly, but this regularity may cause some people to find them a bit boring.  

So keep the sessions fresh and creative. 

Scrum Masters and other retrospective hosts should continuously look for fresh ways to host the sessions. One novel method to hold a retrospective, that I continuously see great results from is The League of Extraordinary Shortsighted Agile Superleaders.  

Learn more about yourself by finding your inner superhero

In this retrospective, you begin with a list of different types of superheros. All of them are great in a certain way, as they can deliver amazing results. But each of them has a weakness, a flip side of their superpower. 

Here are a couple of examples:

Microman types can manage a thousand tasks simultaneously, but they have a tendency to do everything by themselves without delegating tasks to others. That is why other team members learn to put their trust in the Microman in the same way as the Gotham City police put their trust in Batman. The other team members don’t live up to their full potential when in any serious crisis Batman comes in and saves the day.

Another example is the Krisusavoidus, the person who can smooth over any conflict, but instead of actually solving the problem that led to the situation, they just make the conflict situation disappear.

Here is how it works

The retrospective can be organized like this: the team members pick the types of superheroes they have in their team and then present them to other team members (hopefully in a kind way). The idea behind this is to give praise to someone else for being a superhero but also to think about how to avoid the kryptonite of each type of these superheroes.

Is your team ready for this superhero test?

This type of retrospective requires a good team spirit and a safe environment. If you team of superheroes are easily offended, it might, it might not be possible to organize this kind of a session with the whole team. 

Using superheroes outside of the retrospectives

If you are a line manager and you have seen these superheroes in the team, you could consider using these superhero cards in your performance reviews. If problems can be discussed, they can also be solved. 

This is also the basis of retrospectives: regularly raising and discussing painful areas improves the atmosphere.