Retrospective with LEGO®

Retrospective with LEGO® is the best thing I did with my team. In the last week of the year, I received a wonderful tip from Diego and posted here. Now, after running the activity twice, I can say that hindsight with LEGO® is well worth it.

First of all, I did a retrospective with LEGO Serious Play. Now, after adapting a roadmap to retrospective, I can say that this dynamic provides a mix of opportunity with equality, sincerity and, above all, respect. Both groups, who gave me this opportunity, opened their hearts to the current scenario and to what they wanted. I could clearly see what everyone wants, as colleagues and as people.

I had never seen such a great opportunity to encourage people to model their realities. The activities with LEGO® provide an environment rich in metaphors. This scenario facilitates the creation of a reality that is within the heart of each one. Consequently, taking advantage of the retrospective for continuous improvement of the team is much more fun.

The rough draft of my agenda with LEGO® is (only in portuguese):

Below is my agenda – in English:

1. Set the context
   1. Why is this retrospective being held?
2. Prime Directive
   1. “Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job he or she could, given what was known at the time, his or her skills and abilities, the resources available and the situation at hand”.
3. Energizer (the three steps with challenge/build/share cycle)
   1. First, build an airplane and tell us an history about an airplane
   2. Now, build a dog with just 4 LEGO® bricks
   3. Finally, build a box with any number of LEGO® bricks
4. Check-in
   1. Build your own minifigure.
5.  Main course (both steps with challenge/build/share cycle)
   1. Build a model that represents how do you feel in the project today.
   2. Build a model that represents how do you imagine a better future in the project.
6. Filtering
7. Check-out

Below is the photo gallery from our ceremony:

Sources:

• My retrospective agenda is based on: https://www.thoughtworks.com/en/insights/blog/agenda-with-7-steps-for-an-retrospective-effective [Jan / 2014]
• http://seriousplaypro.com/2014/12/09/the-lego-retrospective/ [Dec / 2014]
• https://www.dkrimmer.de/2014/10/30/the-lego-retrospective/ [Oct / 2014]
• http://seriousplaypro.com/about/open-source/ [May / 2010]

As a result, I’m very excited to do new retrospectives and new LEGO® retrospectives will come!