Timeline
Description and objectives
The timeline helps the team visualize the sprint from different perspectives and can help identify patterns, turning points, or correlations between events. By building the timeline as a group, the team shares its experience of the sprint: some members are often unaware of events that others consider significant.
How to run the activity
- Draw a timeline on a wall, flip chart, or digital whiteboard, with the start and end of the sprint at either end.
- The team splits into small groups of no more than five people. Forming the groups by affinity is recommended to make conversation easier.
- Each person is given one or more cards to write down important events. The assessment is subjective: there does not need to be consensus on which events are relevant.
- After ten minutes, the groups place their cards on the timeline at the point when each event occurred.
- The team discusses the cards to understand the events and the emotions they triggered. A break before starting this phase can be helpful.
Variants
The timeline allows multiple variants depending on what information you want to gather. The most common are:
- Color coding feelings: both facts and emotions are collected. Colors represent emotional states (blue = difficult, red = challenging, green = satisfied). It works well as a basis for Color code dots.
- Color coding events: colors represent types of events (technology, team, customer, etc.).
- Color coding functions: colors represent team profiles (developers, customer, technical writers, etc.).
- Color coding themes: colors identify recurring themes (communication, technical practices, relationship with the customer).
- Functional swim lanes: horizontal lanes are added, one per department or function. Each group places its cards in its corresponding lane. This shows how different parts of the organization experienced the same events.
- In/Out swim lanes: one lane for the core team and another for external people who took part in the sprint.
- On/Off: each person places a mark at the point when they joined the project. Another mark is added to represent people who are no longer there.
In remote teams
In a remote format, the timeline is built on a digital whiteboard (Miro, FigJam). It is advisable to prepare a template with the timeline already drawn and to agree in advance on the color code to be used, so that the team can work simultaneously and in silence during the card-placement phase.
Common mistake
Not leaving enough time for discussion. Placing cards on the timeline is only the first part: the real value lies in the conversation about what has been placed. If the team spends most of the time writing and placing cards and little time is left for discussion, the activity produces data but not understanding. The facilitator must protect the discussion time, even if that means reducing the number of cards.
Resources
🔧 Diseñar una retrospectiva [Designing a retrospective, in Spanish]Template · Scrum Manager
📄 Segunda fase de una retrospectiva: en busca de la mejora continua [Second phase of a retrospective: in search of continuous improvement, in Spanish]Scrum Manager Blog · Aug 2023
References
- Derby, Esther; Larsen, Diana. (2006). Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great. Pragmatic Bookshelf.
See also
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