What is the Boxing Ring retrospective?

The Boxing Ring retrospective pits your team in the ring against a worthy opponent: your previous sprint. Now recovering from the fight – victorious or not – the retrospective asks you to review the highlights and lowlights of the sprint – what went well and what went badly.

The template is made up of an icebreaker to get the team loosened up, follows with the main event (the retro), and ends with the team deciding actions for the next sprint.

How to run the Boxing retrospective

Icebreaker: Name the boxers

Start the retrospective with a short icebreaker. Ask the team to pick a name for our boxer in the blue corner, and our opponent in the red corner. E.g. Sir Boxalot and Mr K.Nockdown:

Main Retrospective

The retrospective is split into two sections – our boxer in blue (what went well) and the opponent in red (what went badly).

Questions to ask the team about our boxer:

• How did we perform – where did we do well?
• What was our shining slow-mo moment?
• How did our coach and training help prepare us for the bout?

Questions to ask about the opponent:

• When went badly?
• Did our opponent surprise us?
• What put us on the ropes?
• How did we recover?

Actions & follow-ups

As with any retrospective, there will be things that can be improved. Use the last part of the session to brainstorm actions and experiments to try in the next sprint – does the team need more time in the gym, or should they schedule the next big fight?

Pro-tips

You can also use this template as a Futurespective – change the questions asked of the team to forward-looking questions:

• What is our next big fight?
• When is it?
• Are we prepared for it?
• Where do we need to train harder?
• How do we foresee the encounter turning out?