Storming → Norming
The situation is familiar, a new work has been started, a new team, a new environment and team is going through the storming phase. If a retro is done at this stage there will be a ton of issues flowing in and a plateful of action items to follow up.
Most often people end up taking responsibilities of signing up for an action item until all members have signed up for and close the retro to come back later. This is the situation of too many cooks spoiling the broth.
Many action items taken by each and every person in the team will best keep the status quo and often will pull the focus down. The best approach at the storming phase of a team formation is to help them to go to the norming phase by taking up only top two burning issues, assign an owner, keep it non negotiable to solve it.
Why signing up to fix less issues work better than signing up for many?
One of the problems that usually give rise to so many action items in a retro is that the team has not addressed the way of working problem. When there are many things to be done and people pick it up in a self organising team, each person is going to do it in their style. This will result in a ton of teething issues due to different styles, different assumptions and gaps in communication.
Listing down all the problems of the team and gearing up to fix all of them will result in the same or worser situation. The best path to go towards the norming phase as I have observed is to channelize team’s energy to solve top two issues at a time. This will give the team enough room to identify one way of working together effectively.
Solving the top two issues will set off a chain reaction as the team would have identified how to work together and other action items will soon be taken care without conscious effort. If you are a retro facilitator and end up with a board full of issues and action items, try to bring the team together to solve the top two issues. The team will have a common enemy to fight and will come together very well.
