July 2006
Intermediate to advanced
200 pages
3h 24m
English
Content preview from Agile Retrospectives
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4.2 Activity: Focus On/Focus Off
Use this to set the stage in an iteration retrospective.
Purpose
Help establish a mind-set for productive communication. Help participants set aside blaming and judgment—and fear of blaming and judgment.
Time needed
Eight to twelve minutes, depending on the size of the group.
Description
After welcoming the participants and reviewing the goal and agenda, the retrospective leader describes productive and unproductive communication patterns. After describing those patterns, the participants discuss what they mean for the retrospective.
Steps
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Draw attention to the Focus On/Focus Off poster (see Figure 5, Focus on/Focus off activity) and briefly read through it.
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Form small groups, with no more than four people per group. Ask each group to take one pair of words to define and describe. If there are more than four pairs/groups, it’s OK if more than one group has the same pair of words.
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Ask each group to discuss what their two words mean and what behaviors they represent. Have them describe the impact each would have on the team and the retrospective.
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Each group reports on their discussion to the whole team.
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Ask people whether they are willing to stay in the left column (Focus On descriptions).
Materials and Preparation
Prepare a flip chart with the Focus On/Focus Off terms ahead of time.
Examples
This is a great activity ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.