Formula 1 Futurespective
To be honest, Ido not really care about Formula 1. But my husband is passionate about it and watches every Grand Prix. Last Monday I needed some inspiration for my team’s retrospective.
And I thought of last Sunday’s GP in Baku, what had happened with Verstappen, Hamilton and Vettel. It turned out to be a great analogy for our futurespective, because my team is working towards an important finish line too.
Check in
As a check in I asked the team: how do you feel about last sprint on a scale of Max Verstappen?
The retrospective
We started the retrospective and talked a bit about last Sunday’s race and the importance of adapting to changing circumstances, having a great start,
not taking too much risk, having a great strategy and collaboration. These qualities made Vettel, who started 11th, end up 2nd place.
On the other hand, Max Verstappen was also doing great but had a puncture in one of the final laps, so he couldn’t finish the race. And after the re-start Lewis Hamilton went straight at the first corner due to a braking issue, which made him finish almost last.
So I asked the team the following questions:
- What do we need to have a flying start coming sprint?
- How will we optimally collaborate coming sprint?
- What garbage is out there on the road (that could cause us a flat tyre)?
- Which risks do we foresee?
And of course the important question:
- How do we make sure we’ll finish gloriously?
How it helped the team
The team absolutely loved this approach. It helped them to sharpen their focus with our end goal in mind. One of the realizations was that the daily scrum should be more about collaborating and more focused on the goal, with less distractions. Yesterday the team came together to eliminate some waste that had slipped into our daily scrum!
Final tips
So if you would like to try this futurespective with your team: don’t forget to take the following steps to structure your session:
- Start with a few minutes of silent writing, to give the team the opportunity to write their input.
- Group the items, there probably will be many doubles.
- Ask the team members to explain their input, and allow for a discussion to take place.
- Let the team vote for the 2 or 3 most important items.
- Ask the team to define actions for the coming sprint for the most important items.
Good luck and let me know what you think!
