One more "implicit SF": Using Innovation Games as Retrospective Activities

[Hans-Peter Korn]

Just now I found this blog. It is one more proof, that a lot of "SF" is done without naming it "SF" or even be aware that it is "SF-like".

I don't worry about this ... it works and persons are happy with it ....

Here is the blog: http://blog.james-carr.org/2010/06/10/using-innovation-games-as-ret...

Of course, the first step ("speed boat") IMHO it is not SF ... it follows the "belief", which is widely shared by "Agilists", that we have to address and eliminate "impediments" to become better...
But the next step ("remember the future") is a nice SF-piece.

Maybe it is useful to start with this first step, because "looking for impediments" is expected by the participants to become addressed within a retrospective...

[James Carr]

Thanks for linking my post and helping me discover all about the world of Solution Focused practices. :)

I definitely prefer retrospective activities that are more solution focused rather than recounting the past or looking for impediments... in fact a good variation of the above is to ask participants "what could speeds up our boat" rather than the focus on impediments with anchors to cut.

However sometimes it's a hard mental conditioning to break away from (after all, coming into software development we're often taught that project retrospectives are a "project postmortem") and sometimes I think the participants need this to help them transition to a new format (but not always). :)