
Speedboat is a retrospective highly appreciated by the Scrum Masters to suggest to the teams to look for improvement. We will see what this retrospective is and how to animate it.
Requirement materials for the Speedboat
For the Speedboat, do not hesitate to print sheets representing the following objects:
- a sailing boat that represents the team
- an island that represents the goal to be reached
- the wind blowing in the sail that represents the forces of the team
- the anchor of the boat that represents the problems encountered by the team
- the sun that represents the positive points of the sprint
- a rock that represents the future impediments that the team could meet
It is interesting to know that the exercise helps to highlight the positive and negative points and prepare the team to meet new impediments. This known retrospective is very complete.
The Scrum Master must also provide pens (markers would be top) and post’it notes.
Speedboat unfolding
Step 1 of the Speedboat
The Scrum Master will start by arranging the sheets on a wall or glass in a relatively spaced way to leave room for the future post’it note.

The Scrum Master will explain in the first what each item consists as I told you earlier in the article. The Scrum Master will take the opportunity to give a small batch of post’it notes and pens to all participants of the retrospective.
Step 2 of the Speedboat
Then this scrum master will ask each participant to write their ideas and their feelings on the post’it notes. It’s very important that they’re readable and there is one idea per post’it note. There is no limitation in the number of posts notes to write and there is no obligation to do a post’it per point. The scrum master will timebox this part of 5 minutes.

The next phase will be for each participant to briefly explain why they write these post’it notes. It is necessary to envisage 10 minutes for this phase according to the number of participants.
Step 3 of the Speedboat
If you have the time, I advise you an intermediate phase; we will ask the participants to write the axis of improvement on the post’it notes of another color to ameliorate the next sprints.
The Scrum Master will leave 5 minutes to do this phase. He will then propose to the participants to come explain their axis of improvement; it takes between 5 to 10 minutes in general.
The scrum master will take this opportunity to gather similar ideas.

Step 4 of the Speedboat
Finally, we will ask all participants to vote for the axis of improvement that they think the most important to apply. So, each participant will have the right to put 3 points (on 3 different post’it notes or on the same).
The 3 axis of improvement with the most votes will be those to apply in the next sprint. It is important to finish on a good note; each axis of improvement must have a responsive person within these participants; it’s important to ensure that these axis of improvement will be followed by actions.
Conclusion of speedboat
Now, you know how you can animate the retrospective speedboat. It’s very popular with scrum masters.
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