To continue to gain the benefits of Agility at Scale, organizations must move beyond traditional, in-person retrospectives focused on making individual teams great and towards low-cost, online retrospectives focused on making organizations great. Conteneo's Weave platform provides a low-cost, efficient, massively scalable and extremely high-impact collaboration platform upon which organizations can produce scalable enterprise retrospectives covering any number of teams. This deck explains the process and provides step-by-step instructions for producing a high-impact enterprise retrospective.

1. Enterprise Retrospectives
Luke Hohmann
Founder & CEO, Conteneo
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See also: http://www.innovationgames.com/2014/06/how-to-run-huge-retrospectives/

2. Enterprise Retrospectives
AS A member of a large organization practicing Agile
I NEED to find ways to scale retrospectives
SO THAT I can continue to help my company improve.
ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA:
 I will have a better understanding of what is/isn’t working with
my current retrospective practices.
 I will be able to detect when team-based retrospectives are
starting to provide less value to my organization.
 I will have learned the outline of a scalable process for planning,
facilitating and analyzing results into high-impact initiatives.
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3. About Luke Hohmann
• Founder / CEO of Conteneo
• Author, speaker, blogger
• Philanthropist
Strategy
Engine
Alignment
Engine
Decision
Engine
Idea
Engine

4. Our Purpose
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We believe that empowered, collaborating teams are the
world’s best hope for solving the problems we face.
We believe that teams work better with frameworks.
We design and build awesome frameworks and support
their scalable use through software.
We believe you can do this too which is why we speak,
teach and share our work broadly!

5. Retrospecting Retrospectives
+ Δ

6. Retrospective Outcomes / Impact
Draw a curve that captures the impact or benefits of
your retrospectives over time. Capture any key
inflection points or changes you’ve made.
time
impact
low
high

7. Exploring Your Frame
What was the “scope” when you answered this
question? (e.g., a single team or ?)
Did your curve have any dips?
What might be the cause of these dips?
Could they be warning signs of larger problems?

8. Design Challenge
Design an effective retrospective for 30 Scrum
teams in three locations.
Constraints: You do not have enough budget to fly
everyone to the same location.

9. Agenda
• Motivations for Enterprise Retrospectives
• Process Overview
• Expected Results
• Taking Action

10. Retrospective Outcomes / Impact
Impact /
Benefit
high
low
Early
Adoption
Team
Maturation
Organizational
Limits
Why
Bother?
time

11. Warning Signs...
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Are you getting
things done?
C
BA
Repeated Root
Cause
Lack of ownership

12. Traditional retrospectives
focus on a single, co-located
team.
They can produce results that
improve the performance of
the team, but often fail to
address the needs of the
enterprise – the issues
affecting multiple teams or
beyond the scope of control
of any single team.
Single Team Retrospectives
Image Credit: http://www.cornetdesign.com/images/AgileRetrospectives_134B2/IMG_0016.jpg

13. You have
many Agile
teams.
To improve performance of the enterprise you need
to conduct an enterprise retrospective – not just
one team – but every team.
Improving Enterprise Performance

14. There are Lots of Retrospective Techniques

15. To Scale We Use Online Retrospectives
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Speed Boat is a well-known
retrospective technique in
which teams collaboratively
identify the anchors slowing
them down.
Playing Speed Boat online
and at scale, we can
efficiently conduct an
Enterprise Retrospective.
The result? An Epic Win!

16. Setting Scope
We have found success in setting scope as follows:
Time Scope: Last 6 months or last release,
whichever is greater
Process Scope: The complete development process
from story creation, through development and into
production deployment (release to customer).
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17. Step 1: Identify the Teams
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We identify
the teams
and the
facilitators.

18. Step 2: Conduct Retrospectives
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We schedule and
conduct online
retrospectives
using Speed Boat.
Anchor: Impediment
Propeller: Good Stuff
Placement indicates
how bad or how good.
The number of items
is shared among all
players.
Good
Really Good
Somewhat Bad
Bad
Really Bad

19. Representative Results

20. Step 3: Analyzing Results
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We download the results of all
games to categorize each of
the ideas.
Categorize Each Idea
Create Project
Describe Features,
Benefits and
Price
Team & Enterprise Projects

21. Categorize: People, Process, Technology
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People
Tools /
Technology
Process
“We should
use GitHub”
“My PO doesn't attend
planning meetings”
“We aren’t clear on the
meaning of Done, Done”

22. Categorize: Scope of Control
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“We should use GitHub”
“My PO doesn't attend
planning meetings”
“We aren’t clear on the
meaning of Done, Done”
We use Diana Larsen’s Circles
and Soup framework to help
analyze results. This helps
This is also an excellent online
retrospective tool!
www.innovationgames.com/circles-and-soup

23. Positivity Bias
A pervasive tendency for people [teams],
especially those with high self-esteem, to
rate positive traits as being more true of
themselves than negative traits.

24. Good Ideas or Actual Experience
• Review propellers and associated chat logs to
identify biases:
• Aspirational: We could do this…
• Prescriptive: We should do this…
• You’re job is to create interpretations of the data
based on your experience.
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25. Look for the Patterns!
Use a variety of tools to help you!
Excel, Qlikview…

26. Enterprise
Opportunities
“The Soup”
42 Scrum Teams (350 People)
Speed Boat Retrospective
Teams are
Cooking!
Red == anchor
Green == propeller
Visual Analysis of Results

27. Keep Doing Good Stuff – Address Oppty

28. Create Projects to Address Impediments
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Entire
project
list.
Team
projects.
Enterprise
projects.

29. Selecting Projects
• Management reviews our results.
• Projects are selected and engaged.
• Some projects may be just “approved”.
• We may play additional Innovation Games® such as
Buy a Feature to help in the selection of the projects.
• Implement projects using Scrum (create Product
Backlog Items, coordinate multiple teams through
“sync sprints”, etc.).
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30. Sharing Results
• Results are shared with the team members.
• This may be through
• Senior Leaders
• Scrum Masters
• We want the participants to know they’ve been
heard and that we’ll be acting on the results.
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31. Time Estimates
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Planning / Goal Setting
2-3 weeks
Game Play
1 week
Post-Processing
2-3 weeks
Projects? 1- 5 months

32. Bonus? Innovation!
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33. Curve Jump
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Curve Jump is a framework that
helps teams identify evolutionary,
new and radical technologies.

34. Summary

35. Want more information on retrospectives?
• http://www.innovationgames.com/2014/06/how-to-run-huge-retrospectives/
• https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/december/retrospective-the-fun-way
• https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2015/november/big-picture-retrospectives
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Luke Hohmann
Founder & CEO, Conteneo, Inc.
1296 Kifer Rd., Suite 601
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
mobile: (408) 529-0319
luke.hohmann@conteneo.co