“Thank You” Retrospective

Hello,

Today one big validation from one of our teams: how important is saying THANK YOU. Yes, as a coach and scrum master, it is one of the most important things I like to do; however, teams sometime do not see the impact of something as simple as saying “Thank You”.

With one of the teams we decided to do one activity to feel the value and impact of this. The activity was very simple; each member of the scrum team (developer, team, PO and I) had 5 “thank you” certificates to complete. The certificate has 3 things to complete: “From”, “To”, and “For”

The rules:

• Each member needs to complete 3 certificates for internal team members.
• Each member needs to complete 2 certificates for external team members.
• In “For” team member needs to put something that helped him/her to do a better job. The idea is avoid comments like “For: he/she is a good team player” or “For: he/she is good team member”.
• Each certificate (+ one “gift” card) will be delivered “in person” for the full team.
• As a team member, if you complete 5 certificates, you also will receive one “gift” card.

As you can see; this was a very simple activity that had a big impact on all teams. Other teams were very surprised when one full team of people approached their desks with a “Thank You” certificate and a gift card.

People were proud of each certificate. The team was very happy with the impact and other teams realized how important their work is.  The result of this retrospective was amazing.

Here some pictures:

By the way, at the end of this retrospective, we exchanged “gift” cards in our big conference room. One “gift” card = one beer 🙂

If you haven’t tried it yet, please do it; you will see how much fun this activity is and the impact you can have with this simple “free” activity. If you have already tried it, please share your experience and result. I really like hearing about other’s experiences.

Thank you,

Omar