Case Study: Agile Retrospectives
Product Manager Uses GoWall to
Draw Out Introverts during Agile Meetings
Challenge
A European app development company met every two weeks for retrospective meetings after their Agile sprints. These hour-long project meetings covered:
- What went well?
- What could be improved?
- What should we start doing?
- What should we stop doing?
The product manager noticed that the same people did all the talking during the retrospectives, and that created unbalanced participation. It skewed the insights in favor of an outspoken few. This was a real problem, as the product manager needed to hear from everyone – introverts included – for Agile product development to succeed.
Solution – Enter GoWall
The product manager added GoWall to the first 30 minutes of the retrospective meetings, giving every team member an opportunity to present their ideas. During the final 30 minutes, they reviewed all the notes (known as a “gallery walk”), surfaced the common themes, and assigned five to 10 action items.
Result
With GoWall, several team members who rarely contributed during meetings began to participate, resulting in an amazing 100% engagement of all attendees. Results included a 33% increase in the volume of ideas offered and a marked improvement in the quality of the retrospectives. The Scrum Master was pleasantly surprised by how many great ideas and cost-saving solutions team members proposed. Best of all, every note was captured in GoWall and exported with one click.
With GoWall, the product manager no longer needed to schedule administrators to transcribe post-meeting notes. Empowered with the record of the retrospective, the product manager cited this Latin proverb: “Verba volant, scripta manent.” Spoken words fly away, written words remain.
By the Numbers
Try this: Use GoWall to measure team morale
We all agree that team morale is critical to project success and employee retention. But when was the last time you measured your team’s morale? GoWall makes it easy:
Step 1: Make team morale one of your topics and set it to Anonymous. Ask your team to rate their morale on a scale of 1 to 100.
Step 2: Export the data and average it to get your team’s happiness quotient.