For this week’s iteration retrospective we tried a homegrown variation on the usual heartbeat format. The idea was to condense the brainstorming and dumb mapping exercises into one activity, using the familiar representation of business value - the story card as a guide.
We drew up some big story cards on flip-chart paper and labeled them. In this instance we used the categories:
- Slicing and Progress
- Story detail
- Ownership
- Tracking
- Estimation
- Pairing
- Acceptance testing
The cards were stuck on the wall and the team was divided into small groups of 3-4 people. The team members brainstormed aspects of the past iteration using post-it notes - blue for good and pink for bad. These were stuck on the relevant area of the story card. It’s useful to have the iterations’ story cards available for reference.
