An excellent Scrum retrospective model

This model I learned while working at Secret Escapes and was the model that most brought results in my perspective, so I decided to share it with you.

The model:

1. The retrospective is 1 hour after every sprint;
2. Only with the team members, no external people;
3. 30 minutes before the start of the retrospective, the product manager share the link from Trello so that everyone can write their cards on the cleaned board (expect the actions column);
4. The Trello has six columns, and the card should be in one of the following columns:

Print from Trello board

• Drop (When team members want to drop or remove something that bothers them);
• Add (What does the team want to add to improve the process?);
• Keep (When team members want to keep something);
• Improve (Something that a team wants to improve);
• Kudos (Thank for someone for a nice thing they’ve done);
• Actions.

5. Before starting the explanation, the product manager asks if anyone needs more time to add a card, and if not, we start the explanation of the cards;

6. Everyone has 1 minute at most to explain their cards, and this is respected. If this time finishes, the person has to stop talking. The person has another opportunity to speak more about it if the card is chosen to take action (I’ll explain this later). But usually, everyone is very concise, and one minute is enough;

7. After the cards are explained, we check if the actions from the previous retrospective were done, and we discuss it if needed;

8. Now that everyone knows about every card, each person in the retrospective have three asterisks (*) to give to cards that they think is important to create an action for it;

9. We start to create actions from the most important (the card with more *) to the less important (the card with less *) and assigns to one or two people from the team (can be anyone);

10. We do not create actions from cards that don’t have any *;

11. If the time of the retrospective ends, and we don’t create actions to all cards with at least one *, we stop and end the retrospective;

12. We don’t review cards from the previous retrospective. If something repeats, it will be prioritized and fixed with an action.

This model was the most productive and the one that brought more results in my experience.

You can check this article and others on my website: https://www.marinahaack.com/articles/An-excellent-Scrum-retrospective-model