"At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly." - Agile Manifesto Principles © 2001 The authors...
Short item:
Help to define the World Retrospective Day you want to attend.
More background:
Since 2002 I've attended and/or helped to organize an annual international event, Retrospective Facilitators' Gathering.* In odd numbered years like 2017, the event happens in North America. In even numbered years, someone hosts it outside the US. So far, we've visited Austria, Germany (2x), UK, Denmark, Hungary, and Portugal, as well as US States: Oregon (2x), Arizona (2x), Colorado, New Mexico, North Carolina, California, and Massachusetts. Every year, the event is hosted by a different colleague with the help of a small committee. The groups of attendees tend to be rather small, yet mighty, usually about two to three dozen people passionate about serving teams with well-facilitated retrospectives, opportunities for learning and improvements.
This year David Horowitz hosted the group that attended in Sheffield, Massachusetts, USA, in the beautiful Berkshire Hills area. During the week, Tobias Baier, George Dinwiddie, David Horowitz, Joanne Perrold, and Dana Pylayeva generated a vision for an additional event. They proposed a World Retrospectives Day, in their words, "to increase visibility and spread the word about the value of retrospectives."
Continuing to meet as a virtual group after the gathering, they moved from idea toward reality. They have constructed a survey to gather data - your ideas about the most effective way to frame the day. The World Retrospectives Day needs your help too. Take the survey to offer feedback and help improve the effort.
For those who'd like to know more about Retrospective Faciliators' Gathering, upcoming in 2018 our host, Ben Linders, has found a location in The Netherlands.
• The event was initially conceived, and inspired, in 2001 by Norman L. Kerth, author of Project Retrospectives: a Handbook for Team Reviews. He invited Esther Derby and me to work with him on that first event in spring 2002...and the rest, as they say, is history. To this day, many retrospective facilitators continue to find inspiration in his book and the Retrospective Prime Directive.