What is the News Magazine Retrospective?
The News Magazine retrospective transforms team reflection into an engaging journalistic format, encouraging participants to view their work through the lens of a news publication. This creative approach helps teams document their experiences, challenges, and achievements in a fresh and engaging way. By structuring feedback as headlines, current issues, and quotes, teams can better organize their thoughts and communicate their experiences effectively. This format makes it easier to identify important patterns and trends while maintaining an element of fun and creativity in the retrospective process. This template is particularly effective for teams who want to break away from traditional retrospective formats and encourage more creative expression. It helps surface both significant achievements and areas for improvement in a way that feels less formal and more engaging.
News Magazine Retrospective Format
Headlines
What do we want to tell everyone?
Encourage participants to think like journalists and create impactful headlines that capture key achievements or significant events from the sprint. Headlines should be concise, attention-grabbing, and focus on the most newsworthy aspects of your team's work.
Current Issues
What topics are important and relevant?
Guide the team to identify and discuss pressing matters that need attention. Like a news magazine's current affairs section, focus on immediate challenges and ongoing concerns that affect the team's work and collaboration.
Fake News
What assumptions turned out to be false?
Help the team identify and discuss misconceptions or incorrect assumptions that affected their work. This topic allows teams to learn from misunderstandings and adjust their approach accordingly.
Quotes
What would be a quote for the last sprint?
Encourage team members to share memorable quotes that capture the essence of their sprint experience. These can be actual quotes from team members or metaphorical statements that represent their feelings or observations.
Next Issue
What ideas do we have for the next sprint?
Guide the team in identifying forward-looking opportunities and improvements. Like planning the next issue of a magazine, focus on what stories the team wants to create in their next sprint.
When to use this retrospective
- When you want to make retrospectives more engaging and creative for teams who may be experiencing retrospective fatigue
- After completing a significant milestone or project phase where there are many different aspects to review and discuss
- When you need to encourage more open and creative expression from team members who might be hesitant to share in traditional formats
- For teams who want to practice different ways of articulating and documenting their experiences and learnings
Suggested icebreaker questions
- If your last sprint was a newspaper headline, what would it be?
- What's the most surprising 'breaking news' you encountered during this sprint?
Ideas and tips for your retrospective meeting
- Encourage creativity in headline writing - the more engaging, the better the discussion
- Set aside time for teams to 'research' their stories by reviewing sprint metrics and feedback before the session
- Rotate the role of 'editor-in-chief' among team members to encourage different perspectives
- Use real journalism techniques like the '5 W's' (Who, What, When, Where, Why) to structure discussions
- Keep a 'publication archive' of past retrospectives to track patterns and progress over time
- Consider creating a physical or digital 'magazine cover' to showcase the team's key achievements
New to retrospectives? Read our guide on how to run a retrospective →
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