Hi there,
We’re officially 75% through the year!
By now, your team has probably failed at least once.
Remember: Fail stands for First. Attempt. In. Learning.
… Unless you forget to retro and continue to make the same (preventable) mistakes over and over again.
Let’s get that retro (and learning) in before the end of the year.
⚡ Supercharge of the Week
Remote Octopus recommends regularly conducting retrospectives.
A retrospective – or a retro – is a structured team conversation with the primary goal of reviewing and reflecting on a recently completed project, milestone, or scope of team collaborative work.
Here’s a little bit more on how the goals of a project retro v. a team retro might differ:
A Project Retro
Discusses a recently completed, cross-functional project.
Primary Goal: Review and reflect on the project, including cross-functional collaboration and measures of success, in order to identify action items to further streamline cross-functional work moving forward.
A Team Retro
Provides an opportunity for a clearly-defined team to discuss their workflows and collaboration within a specific box of time, such as the past quarter (like Q3!).
Primary Goal: Review and reflect on the workflows and collaboration during the specific box of time in order to identify action items to further streamline teamwork moving forward.
When we’re moving quickly, retros can easily be forgotten – but every time we drop a retro, we lose a valuable opportunity for continuous improvement. Regular retros cultivate everything from accountability to growth mindset to psychological safety within your team.
⚡ During a retro conversation, your team analyzes past performance. You might consider:
What are we proud of?
What did we like? Loathe?
What still puzzles us?
What did we learn?
Most importantly, the team discusses + documents:
What do we commit to improve moving forward?
Different retro formats might focus on different questions, such as the Starfish technique or 4Ls from Atlassian. Remote Octopus has a free retro template here.
🏎 Before life speeds up in Q4… Conduct a retro! Analyze your team failures and synthesize your learnings in order to optimize your team’s performance as we head towards a new year.
🐙 Remote Octopus Resources
Ready to level up operational excellence for your team? Check out our resources:
