Description of the workshop
The Octopus Retrospective was designed to encourage participants in a workshop to question themselves according to the following eight axes:
- Delivery (process, DevOps, etc.);
- Meetings (procedure and content of meetings and ceremonies themselves);
- Organization ;
- Communication ;
- Tools;
- Reporting;
- Framing; and
- Quality (of what is produced).
On each of the eight axes, the team members must ask themselves what positive points and the points for improvement are. They can also share ideas for improvement.
The scope of the subjects covered by the eight areas of reflection is deliberately broad and exhaustive. The objective is to question topics that participants do not necessarily think about on a daily basis, which are outside their immediate field of action.
You can modify, add, or remove the axes' labels to adapt them to your context. These labels are only keywords suggested to the participants to guide their reflection.
The Octopus Retrospective is a workshop that requires time to think deeply about each topic and sort and prioritize the resulting issues and actions. As such, it is a particularly suitable format for carrying out an overall assessment, for example, at the end of a strategic period of 3 months or a year.
In addition, this retrospective is particularly relevant for conducting a joint assessment between several teams, for example, as part of a scaled Agile program. In this case, it will be necessary to run it twice: once within each group, then a second time to share the problems and ideas of each of the teams and define an overall action plan.
How to run this workshop with only one team
Within a single team, the Octopus Retrospective takes place in 5 steps:
Step 1: Presentation of the workshop to the team (5 minutes)
The facilitator explains the course and the objectives of the workshop, as well as the different areas of work. The aim is to create a shared understanding of the goals among all participants.
Tip: Use one card color per axis to navigate the octopus easily.
On each of the eight axes, the team members must ask themselves what positive points and the points for improvement are. They can also share ideas for improvement.
Point of attention: This retrospective generally generates many comments and actions, so particular attention must be paid to their sorting and prioritization at the end of the workshop.
Step 2: Individual reflection (15 to 20 minutes - depending on the number of axes of reflection)
The participants think individually according to the axes and position their tickets around the octopus.
Step 3: Sharing comments (1h15)
Once the individual reflection is complete, each participant shares and presents their identified positive and negative points. Participants can also share ideas if they have any.
Tip: As team members share their notes, as a facilitator, you can sort and group them by topic. Meanwhile, you can rephrase the points shared to help participants build a common understanding of the topics discussed.
Step 4: Action plan (30 minutes)
Based on the issues raised and the ideas shared, the objective during this stage is to reflect on actions and initiatives for improvement.
Step 5: Prioritization of actions (10 minutes)
Prioritize actions based, for example, on a Value/Effort matrix; it will help you identify quick wins.
The objective is to focus only on the essential subjects, i.e., no more than 3 or 5 actions.
Point of attention: the actions must have a carrier and be carried out during the next sprint.
How to run this workshop with several teams (scaled Agile program)
Tip: if several groups participate in the workshop, we advise you to involve two facilitators.
How to run this workshop with several teams (scaled Agile program)
As part of an agility-at-scale program, the Octopus Retrospective takes place in 6 steps:
Step 1: Presentation of the workshop to the team (5 minutes)
The first step is the same as with a single team, with one particularity: each team has its own template, and gathering issues and ideas will be done on a dedicated template.
In addition, to easily track which tickets belong to a given team, teams must enter their team's name in the id field of the cards.
Step 2: Reflection & intra-team comment sharing (2 hours)
Each team completes steps 2 and 3 of the single-team version of the workshop (and even step 4 for internal team actions, if time allows).
In addition, there is a specific step in the workshop with several teams to select the tickets to be shared with the other teams. These issues should have some relevance to the overall context of the Scaled Agility program.
Step 3: Copy of selected tickets (15 minutes)
The team representatives copy the tickets into the global restitution template.
Tips: The facilitator(s) should order the tickets to facilitate feedback during step 3. (A break is needed?!)
Step 4: Overall inter-team feedback (30 minutes)
To achieve the gathering and overall restitution, the representatives of each team – for example, the Scrum Master, the Product Owner, and the Tech Lead – share the issues and ideas they have previously selected with their team.
Step 5: Action Plan (30 minutes)
Based on the issues raised and the ideas shared, the objective at this stage is to reflect on actions and initiatives for improvement.
Step 6: Prioritization of actions (10 minutes)
Prioritize actions according to a Value/Effort matrix. The objective is to focus only on the most important topics, i.e., at most than 3 or 5 actions.
Tip: Don't throw actions not in quick wins into the bin; add them to an Action Backlog.
