The Twitterspective – agile retrospective
by Anthony Petrucci
What is the Twitterspective?
Why hold an Agile Retrospective when you can have a Twitterspective? The Twitterspective is a paper-based
social media-like simulation that can be used to gather data and generate insight from the team in your
Retrospective. It borrows elements from a few different social media channels and blends them into
one. Given the popularity of social media, this is a fun way to engage with the team through a familiar
medium.
What can you expect to get out of this exercise?
Expect to see some smiles or hear people giggling as you explain to your team that they will be participating in a social media simulation on paper. In this exercise, everyone has a voice and will have their opinions acknowledged by their team mates. Once the Twitterspective Feed begins to light up (with post-it notes of course), they can see how their peers are reacting to each post in real time.
When would you use this exercise?
Use this exercise after your warm-up activity. This may be a good change for your team if your recent Retrospectives have been more traditional. It gives a good opportunity to both shy and outgoing team members to be heard.
How to do it
1. Prepare post-its for each participant
2. Make sure you have a whiteboard, window, or a wall space that is large enough to accommodate a row of Post-its. This will act as your ‘Twitterspective Feed’
3. Ask the group: “If you were to express your opinion on a social media channel about the last Sprint (or any predetermined topic) what would you say?”
4. Allow 4 – 7 minutes of silent writing and encourage the team to include hashtags about their overall sentiment or perhaps a clever meme.
5. Have the team post their Tweets on the Twitterspective feed.
6. As a facilitator, you will read each post-it, one at a time, and have each participant to: 1) comment on the post-it 2) ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ the post. Give the team 2 minutes to write their comment. Please note – the author of the post DOES NOT comment or like/dislike his own post.
7. As a team, go through each post along with its associated comments. Take the conversation a little deeper whenever necessary. This conversation should not be longer than 40 minutes.
8. Through your discussion, there should be some takeaways identified. Gather the team’s ideas and keep track of the takeaways.
9. After the Twitterspective, send a summary email to the team displaying each of the posts as well as how many likes/dislikes there were.
Timeline
- Explanation/Introduction (1-3 minutes)
- Participants write Tweets (4-7 minutes)
- Tweet and comment evaluation/discussion (30– 40 minutes; only allow 1-2 minutes to writeeach comment)
- Conclusion – Identify and gather takeaways (5 minutes)
Anthony Petrucci is a Scrum Master, Kanban Lead, former Product Owner, and Agile Enthusiast. For comments, questions, or feedback, please contact Anthony on Twitter @AgileSauce.
Picture credits go to: Anthony Petrucci and Alan Stanton
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