The leaving gift retrospective
When a team member leaves, it can be surprisingly disruptive. Teams change, relationships shift, and the goodbye can feel abrupt.
To make this transition more positive, I’ve started running a special retrospective format I call “The Leaving Gift Retrospective”. Instead of analyzing where there is room for improvement, the team reflects on memories, learnings and appreciation from their time spent together.
This is not a catch-all solution — just feelgood reflection, hopefully easing some of the stress of a team member leaving. This format is not meant for constructive criticism, it’s a warm and fuzzy kind of retrospective where everyone leaves feeling warm inside.
The Format
As always — a face-to-face retrospective is always to prefer, especially when it gets a bit more personal. But, this is very doable with a distributed team using tools such as Mural, Miro or FigJam. I usually set about an hour to complete this retrospective.
It follows the normal procedure of retrospectives:
- Introduction
- Ideating
- If needed: categorization
- Going through the results
- Summary
The main board of the retrospective consists of four categories: Early memories, Fun memories, Learnings and Parting thoughts. These four categories are separated into two sections, one for the team and the other for the person leaving the team.
Introduction. Go through the format and explain the purpose of the retrospective, this is a feelgood retrospective, nothing else. Make sure to emphasize that the team uses one part of the board and the leaving person uses the other part.
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Ideating. Sticky-note time! Set aside about at least 5–7 minutes for the participants to write down their ideas and put them on the board.
I prefer that everyone post the sticky-notes as soon as they have written them. For some people it can be difficult to ideate in this kind of retrospective, and seeing other notes appear often helps trigger memories.
The person leaving the team should focus on their own experience, for example: What was an early memory of joining the team or company?
The rest of the team should instead focus on the person leaving, for example: What was your early memory of working with them?
Categorization. If needed set aside a minute or two to cluster sticky notes if there are a lot. This can be done by the facilitator live during the ideating phase.
Going through the results. Go through the results of the produced sticky notes category by category. Start with the notes produced by the person leaving category by category. Then focus on the rest of the teams notes category by category — this way the person leaving the company is send off with a lot of love bombs.
Summary. If needed summarize the results and perhaps give the person leaving all of the sticky-notes or a photo of the board as a nice parting gift.
I’ve used this format several times and it consistently ends with laughter, appreciation, and a much warmer goodbye.
Sometimes a retrospective doesn’t need to improve the process — sometimes it just needs to celebrate the people.
Happy retrospective!
Jonas Carlsson
Agile Coach at Visiba Care
