It’s important to me that my Scrum Teams keep the Scrum Values in mind, and how better to do this than during a Retrospective?  I recently noticed that there were some problems facing one of my teams, and wanted to find a way to foster an open discussion and see where the Team would go with it.  It took some brainstorming, and then the perfect approach hit me.  This is a perfect team radar exercise.

If you haven’t done any team radar before, this is a very powerful tool to get a feel for how your teams are feeling and generate some ideas on how to improve.  The general idea is as follows:

1. On your whiteboard/easel/wall – draw a 5 line starfish diagram.
2. Each arm of the starfish should be labeled with one of the Scrum Values
   • Courage
   • Commitment
   • Focus
   • Openness
   • Respect
3. Each arm has a scale, starting at 0 in the center to 10 at the tip of the arm.
4. Paper is handed to each member of the Team.  You can have a copy of the starfish on the paper, or you can ask them to draw a copy on their sheet.  I generally like to have the team members draw, as it adds a little reinforcement to what we are doing.
5. Review the Scrum Values with the team!  Let them ask questions if they aren’t clear on any of them!
6. Each member now scores how they think the team does at living the Scrum Values – 0 being we don’t do this at all, 10 being we personify this – and make a dot on the corresponding arm of the starfish on their paper.  This is done in silence; no sharing thoughts.
7. Once the dots are drawn, each member should connect the dots on their paper, drawing a pentagon of sorts.
8. Each member is given a different colored marker, and asked to recreate their drawing on the wall/whiteboard/easel.
   The completed radar will look something like this:

When everyone is done, allow the team a minute to look at the results and think about it.

• Where are we in agreement?
• Where do we have a strong disconnect?
• How can we push the lower values up, and how can we bring widely distributed answers closer together?

COLLECT THOUGHTS

Ask questions and facilitate the conversation without guiding the team toward any answers you may have in mind.  Let them talk and see what they can come up with!  When I ran this recently, I was pleased to see that without any prompting by me, the team found the same weak spots that I did.

You will note that I don’t put any indicators to mark where the values between 0 and 10 fall on the arms of the starfish.  I like to leave it a little vague and allow the members of the team to interpret where they think things fall, as it opens up the drawing a little more and provides opportunity for discussion.  That discussion might be that everyone is actually in agreement on how we are doing, and that’s great!