Retrospective serendipity

If we hadn’t run out of time at our latest retrospective then I wouldn’t have discovered SurveyMonkey.com.

We usually end our retros by dot voting on a list of suggested improvements. This time the retro had been particularly fruitful – lots of interesting discussions and a dozen improvement suggestions. And then our time ran out.

With various team members already heading off to their next meetings I rashly promised to send out an internet based survey so that we could at least prioritize our improvements list before the afternoon’s planning session.

And then I started to wonder if I’d promised too much. With no time to do an in depth market analysis and after a quick google I selected SurveyMonkey. A choice I wasn't going to regret. 15 minutes later the survey was sent out and in the following planning meeting we had a nicely prioritized list of suggested improvements.

It worked so well that I think we’ll do it this way again – even if we don’t run out of time in our retrospective.