The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

Today we will talk about a new type of retrospective, but first an introduction to those of you who have never taken part in a “retro”.

A retrospective is an event which takes place at the end of a piece of work in an agile workplace where the people involved reflect on what went well as well as what didn’t go so well. The hidden goal here is to aide those involved with reflecting on their time. It is also important to take actions moving forward to enhance the good and reject the bad.

There are many different techniques for retros, from colouring in pictures to have a more active discussion. Today we will introduce a technique my partner came up with inspired by 1966’s “The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly”.

To run this retro you need one leader and enough post-it notes and pens for everybody involved. A caveat for this retro is that you need to understand the people in the room, a goal here is to see the ugly truths of your project if people in the room can’t take criticism or fairly give it out this isn’t the right retro for you. The leader should take three post-it notes and create three separate columns.

Now each person in the room should write down their feelings as they fit into the remaining topics.

The goal here is to bring to light what went exceptionally well. Use these post-its to…