It represents what went well during the Sprint and the practices you want to continue encouraging within the team in the future. The wind is what drives your boat forward and helps you reach the island. Typically, areas of conversation during a Sailboat retro fall under one of the following categories: The topics you discuss during a Sailboat retrospective are focused on keeping the journey smooth and analyzing the problems that make it more difficult.
Imagine your team as the crew of a boat propelled by the wind and each Sprint is like a stage of the trip towards your goal of reaching the land you see ahead of you. The Sailboat is a fun way of doing retrospectives by looking at your work as part of a sea journey. It gives you the opportunity to inspect your process from the perspective of a crew sailing a boat headed toward an exotic island.
If you have come to this conclusion yourself, why not spice things up occasionally with a different retrospective format like the Sailboat retro? We hope this guide has been helpful in understanding the Sailboat retrospective technique and how to conduct it.Keeping your retros fun is vital for maintaining high team engagement in the long run and continuously improving your process. By using this technique, teams can work together to address issues and improve their performance in the next sprint. Conclusion:Ī Sailboat retrospective is an effective technique that helps teams reflect on their past performance and identify areas of improvement. Increases the team's awareness of their progress. Helps teams identify areas of improvement.Įncourages open and honest communication.įosters a sense of teamwork and ownership. Review the action items in the next sprint retrospective. Once everyone has shared their observations, group them into categories like "Sail", "Wind", and "Anchor".ĭiscuss the grouped observations and identify the ones that need improvement.īrainstorm ideas to address the identified issues and assign action items to team members. Encourage them to be specific and provide examples. Draw the wind as a vector and the anchors as a symbol.Īsk each team member to write down their observations on sticky notes and stick them on the sailboat. To conduct a Sailboat retrospective, follow these steps:ĭraw a sailboat on a whiteboard or use an online tool like Slatebox. What factors hindered the team's progress?īy discussing these questions, the team can identify areas of improvement and take actions to address them in the next sprint. In a Sailboat retrospective, the team discusses the following: This technique is based on the metaphor of a sailboat, where the wind represents factors that support the team's progress, and the anchors represent factors that hinder it. What is a Sailboat Retrospective?Ī Sailboat retrospective is a technique used by agile teams to reflect on their past performance and identify areas of improvement.
In this article, we'll take a deep dive into the Sailboat retrospective technique and how it can help you improve your team's performance. This technique uses a sailboat as a metaphor to visualize the team's journey, with the wind representing factors that support the team, and the anchors representing the factors that hinder their progress. A Sailboat retrospective is a popular agile retrospective technique that helps teams identify what worked well and what needs improvement.