 Apocalypse. The topic of this retrospective is helping a team maintain momentum when they have the responsibility of building new product features as well as dealing with the maintenance of that in-life product. To do this, you'll need the following resources. Some flip chart paper, some marker pens, a large wall space and some sticky tape or tack. We're going to use a theme of apocalypse here in this retrospective and we offer you the following hook to give to your team. Our way of life is under threat from bugs that won't die. We must learn how to survive, thrive and fight back. Yes, the apocalypse is upon us. Our product is being overrun with bugs. Some we can see, some we can't. All that stands between the bugs and total annihilation is our team. In the next 90-minute retrospective we need to develop a strategy to strike back against the enemy and make positive progress towards restoring a possible future. Events. Firstly, we need to understand what we are up against here. Hand each team member a blank piece of paper and ask them to think back to a recent instance of a bug that they encountered. Ask them to draw that bug in the top left-hand corner of the paper. Encourage the team to have some fun with this as it's a drawing activity. Add some color and some detail as they please. Now that we understand what a bug looks like, we need to analyze this pest a bit further. Ask each team member to add the following labels to the bug report that they're creating. Origin. Where did this bug come from? Lifespan. How long has it survived? Threat. How dangerous is it? What problems does it cause? Population. How many bugs like this are we dealing with here? Meaning. We are now going to ask the team to stick their bug reports up onto the wall side by side. Ask the team to examine the bug reports by reading them in their own time. You may want to allocate five minutes or so of quiet time to do this. When the group have had chance to read and enjoy the types of bugs that are threatening us, ask the team to move the reports into threat order. By that we mean order the bug reports from left to right on the wall with the most threatening on the left down to the least threatening on the right. Once an order has been decided, take the report for the most threatening bug off the wall and place it onto the table for the team to study in more detail. The team are now going to discuss this bug and create tactics to apply should they encounter this bug again in the future. Ask the team for their thoughts around the following strategy headings. Eliminate. How can we tackle these bugs in a more effective way in the future? How do they die? What method do we currently use? Consultants. Who from outside the team can help us eliminate the threat? What knowledge can they share? Early warning system. How can we identify the threat earlier? What alarms will we need? Quarantine. Do we need to isolate this type of bug so we can study it more? What can we learn from examining it in more detail? Airstrike. Is the threat beyond our control? Do we need to rewrite some problematic code here? As the facilitator capture the output onto the flip chart paper. You can achieve this by using several pieces of flip chart paper hung around the room labeled with these headings and walk through a discussion for each option capturing the thoughts of the team along the way. Else. So far we have only looked at reactive tactics by treating just the symptoms rather than the cause. Now we can encourage the team to find a cure for this problem to rid the problem of source. Explain to the team that we're going to need to look at the bug under a microscope to start to understand how it came into being. Write the name of the bug at the top of a new piece of flip chart paper. Then we're going to increase the magnification of the problem in five steps. Split the flip chart page into five magnifications as we want the team to consider the potential causes at each level. Explain to the team that this is similar to the five wise exercise as some of the may have done that before. Start off by asking this, what is causing the bug to appear? Note down the answer and then ask but what is the cause of that? And repeat this exercise until the team are satisfied that they've identified the true source or the point of origin for this bug. Decisions. Now we have completed our analysis. We need to make some decisions on our strategy as a team. We are looking for volunteers to split into three tactical groups, defence, attack and R&D research and development. The defensive strategy will propose any improvements on how we deal with eliminating bugs that creep up on us. The attack strategy will look at ways we can eliminate a number of defects all at once. The R&D team will propose ways that we can reduce the number of bugs created at source. Ask the team to self-organise into those three groups and allow 15 minutes for them to create a strategy. Then reassemble as one united team and make some decisions about which strategy to embark on. The team could decide to choose only one or a blend of more than one.