Retro recipe

5 Why’s

Posted on the 15th of March 2023 by

Ingredients

  • A (free) Mural account
  • This mural template
  • An internet-connected device for all participants
  • Videocall software
  • Your awesome team
  • Trust

Retrospective (1h30)

Icebreaker (15m)

In this icebreaker, we will allow each participant to answer two personal questions by placing a sticky note on the template we are using. The questions are:

  • Do you have special skills? If yes, which ones?
  • What is the biggest goal that you achieved?

Of course, you can change these questions to your liking. After everyone answered the questions, you can have an open conversation about the answers with the whole team in order to build a stronger connection.

At this point, you should also explain the format and timebox to your team.

Why (45m)

As you can see in the template, there are three boards with the same questions. Now you get to decide over how many breakout rooms you want to divide the team. It is best to do this beforehand.

A bunch of questions can be found on the board, but there is no need to answer them all. The participants start by answering one of the questions, followed by "why this?", "why that? ", etc. The idea is to ask "why" repeatedly to ultimately find the root cause for some of these things and try to create actionable items out of this. You can ask "why" up to five times, but if you reach an action item earlier, that's great too. You should always try to challenge if what you found is really the root cause and the whole team should agree on this. If anyone has additional ideas, the questioning should continue.

You can do this for 45 minutes. Afterwards, call your team back and move on to the next part.

Action Points (20m)

During this part, you can bring up action points from previous retros and new action points obtained in the breakout rooms. These action points can be further discussed if needed.

At this point, as a team, you choose one or multiple of the possible action points to focus on first.

Rate the Retro (10m)

Last but not least: rating this retro.

Here, the team rates the retro with a number from 0 to 5 and has the opportunity to discuss/mention what they thought to be the good and the bad about this format. You can then take this into account for future retros.