I'm an avid admirer of retrospectives and the sentiment that if there was one agile practice we implement, let it be retrospectives. We need to think about how we are doing on a cadence, and we need to do it so that we ourselves get to enjoy the improvements. Thus retrospectives, not postmortems. Because let's face it: even if I learned today that we have a lessons learned from past projects database, for me to apply other people's lessons learned, it's likely that no amount of documentation on their context is sufficient to pass me the information. Retrospectives maintain a social context in which we are asked to learn.
Last week I argued that best of retros I have been in were due to great participants with an average (if any) facilitator. My experience spoken out loud resulted in a colleague writing a while blog post on facilitators skills: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/retrospectives-why-facilitators-skills-matter-more-than-spiik-mvp--fmduf/?trackingId=yc302cSWzR0ZhHTSNoyVmQ%3D%3D
Success with retrospectives appears to be less of an issue with roles and responsibilities, than of a learning culture. When in a team where each gig is short and you could be out any moment (consulting!), it takes courage to open up about something that could be improved. The facilitator does not make it safe. The culture makes it safe. And facilitator, while they may hold space for that safety and point out lack of it, anyone can.
When someone speaks too much, we think it's the facilitator skills that matter in balancing the voices. Balancing could come from anyone in the team. Assuming the facilitator notices all things feels like too much on a single person.
Building cultures where work does not rely on a dedicated role is kind of what I'd like to see. Rotating the role on the way to such state tends to be a better version that having someone consistently run retros.
Having facilitation skills correlates with having participation skills too. At least it changes the dynamic from passive participant already afraid to express their ideas to an active contributor.
