Having working agreements during the retro (or any meeting) helps the team in working in a psychological safe environment. Being chosen by the team, these agreements are not negotiable and are the safe boundary of our behaviour.
Teams often have agreements on participation, use of time, attendance, decision-making, idea generation, listening, and many others.
Duration: 5 minutes (for reaffirming). 30 minutes to create new ones
Steps
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Explain the activity “We’ll develop a set of working agreements for the retrospective so that everyone will know our expectations for working together. It will be each team member’s responsibility to follow the agreements. It’s the job of everyone on the team to notice and bring to the team’s attention when an agreement is violated. The purpose of the agreements is to support the discussions we need to have during the retrospective.”
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Form pairs or small groups (<4 people)
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Ask each group to develop 3 to 5 working agreements that would help improve the retrospective. They must be new behaviour and not something the group already does “Our meetings are most productive when…”
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Ask each group (round-robin) to report the group most-preferred agreement on a shared canvas. Continue until all distinct agreements are collected
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Explain that the group should choose 3 to 7 arguments
Affirming agreements
- less than 5 Ask if everyone fully understand the proposals. Wait for questions. When everyone understand the proposals, use thumb voting to accept/reject each one (thumb up = agree, thumn down = veto, thumb sideways = I’ll go with the group). No vetoes means accepted
- more than 5 agreements Dot voting to prioritize (3 votes each), then consensus thumb voting for the top 5
Variation: Team Working Agreements as Meeting ground rules
If the team already developed working agreements for daily work, check wether they would apply also to the retrospective.
Viceversa, if the team created agreements for the retro, check wether they can be useful for daily work.
Variation: Meeting ground rules for conflicts or controversy
For existing or potential conflict, the meeting might require additional agreements to be used as guardrails during the discussion.
They often have the form: “As a team, we handle conflict most effectively when…”
Examples: preventing blaming/shaming, avoiding personal attacks or loaded language, and in general agreements to maintain mutual respect and safety.