Locate strengths
Description and objectives
Team members interview each other about the most positive moments of the sprint or project. The goal is not only to identify what went well, but to understand why it went well: which conditions, resources, and ways of working produced those peak moments. With that knowledge, the team can try to reproduce them deliberately in the next sprint.
The technique takes an appreciative perspective: instead of focusing on problems and how to avoid them, it focuses on strengths and how to amplify them.
How to run the activity
- Form pairs or trios (if the team has an odd number of members). Ideally, the people in each pair should not know each other well or should not have worked together often.
- Hand out the interview questions along with some facilitation tips:
- Be curious.
- Give the interviewee your full attention.
- Take notes to remember the key points.
- Listen to the anecdotes and stories so you can share them later.
- It is not a conversation: the interviewer asks questions and listens without interrupting.
- When the first interviewer has finished, swap roles.
- Once the interviews are over, move on to the Identify themes activity to identify common patterns in what the team has shared.
When to use it
- When the team needs to shift the focus of the retrospective from problems to strengths, especially after a difficult or demotivating period.
- As a kickoff activity for a new team or a new project, to learn about each member's capabilities.
- When the facilitator wants to combine information gathering with building connections between people who don't know each other well.
Common mistake
Not moving on to Identify themes. The interview activity generates rich material, but that material needs to be processed collectively to identify the patterns that explain the high points. If the session ends with the interviews without aggregating the results, the team will have had interesting conversations but will not have extracted the collective learning the technique can generate.
Resources
🔧 Diseñar una retrospectiva [Designing a retrospective, in Spanish]Template · Scrum Manager
References
- Derby, Esther; Larsen, Diana. (2006). Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great. Pragmatic Bookshelf.
See also
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