Keep-Problem-Try

A retrospective looks back at how the work was done rather than at what was built. Open one by putting a blank screen up and asking how the cycle went, though, and it usually goes one of two ways: nothing gets said and it ends in ten minutes, or complaints pour out for an hour and nothing is decided.

Pagedeck's first retrospective was the second kind. Seven people talked for an hour and everything surfaced — slow reviews, requirements changing mid-cycle, too many meetings. What the document held at the end was a list of remarks, and the same three items came back the next cycle.

Keep-Problem-Try draws columns on that meeting. With columns in place the conversation moves toward filling them, and an empty last column makes it visible that the retrospective isn't finished.

You start from the three columns, but the first step is writing rather than talking.

1. Everyone writes silently for five to ten minutes. Start with talking and the rest of the room drifts toward whoever spoke first, while the quieter people's items never appear at all.
2. Read the keeps first, then bring out the problems. Starting from what went well keeps the problems that follow from reading as accusations. Write problems about the method, not the person: "reviews are slow" gives you nothing to fix, while "review requests all pile up on Friday and spill into the weekend" does.
3. Group and choose. Cluster similar items and pick two or three by vote. Ten problems may have surfaced; two or three are what this cycle addresses.
4. Write one thing to try for each problem chosen. It has to be an action that fits in the next cycle, with a name attached and a time to check it. Not "review faster" but "review requests go up by Wednesday."
5. The next retrospective opens by checking the previous tries. What worked moves into the keep column; what didn't gets dropped.

"Plenty of problems, and the try column is empty."

The retrospective is about to end without deciding what changes.

"That's written as a people problem. Let's rewrite it as a method."

Turn it into a sentence with something to fix in it.

"Let's start by checking the two tries from last time."

Begin from what the previous cycle committed to.

Pagedeck runs this format for 45 minutes every two weeks. Mia facilitates, and the try column takes two items at most. They used to write five, and cycle after cycle a check would find that none had happened.

After the cut to two, the completion rate went up. The try about getting review requests in by Wednesday moved into the keep column after two cycles, and the problem never came back to a retrospective again. When the columns themselves start feeling stale, teams run one cycle on Start-Stop-Continue instead, since a different set of columns surfaces different items.