Hey, I wanted to share our current version of our team retrospective process in case anyone found it useful. It is pretty much a standard agile retrospective process that you might see in Scrum, with a little Holacracy mixed in. I suppose you could also use it to help folks generally identify tensions in any team, not just in software teams.
Here's the basic process:
Checkin Round: Normal Holacracy meeting style checkin round
Data capture: on a "sticky", put items on a sticky note for the following (we limit to 5 per person, but you can adjust for team size):
- What went right?
- What went wrong?
- What had you confused?
Group the items and discuss: sometimes we use labels for the groupings/themes that emerge
Pull out actions and projects: be sure to capture these in Holacracy tactical meeting output format; someone can volunteer to email them, and each person is responsible for putting their items into their personal organization system.
Closing Round: Normal Holacracy meeting style closing round
I think the important piece is to make sure you have clear, actionable items at the end, consisting of projects, actions, or tensions to bring to governance.
We're a virtual team, so here's a template of the virtual retrospective board we use in the GlassFrog circle for you to copy and use. You can also do this in person with real sticky notes and a nice big wall: