 Family. The topic of this retrospective is distributed teams. I don't think there are many people who would disagree that, on the whole, teams who are co-located tend to be a lot more productive than those who are geographically dispersed. Yet, it's an increasingly common reality for a team to be spread across offices, countries, or even continents. Now, our initial advice is to avoid that wherever possible, but for those of you that can't avoid it, we've designed a retrospective to help give that team a greater chance of success. For this retrospective, you'll need the following resources. You'll need several pieces of flip chart paper, some sticky notes, and some marker pens. You could prepare a team charter template in advance, but this isn't essential. We strongly recommend you to try everything you can to get everyone together in the same location for this meeting. But if this is impossible, then ensure that everyone has access to an online whiteboard or collaborative space that allows people to simulate the writing, posting, and moving of sticky notes. Hook. We intend to use the metaphor of family as the theme for this retrospective, and our suggested hook is this. We've often heard people say that being part of a great team is a bit like being a family. This is much harder to achieve the further apart everyone is, but it's not impossible, and as we are far apart, it's even more important for us to develop a sense of team. The aim of this retrospective is to create a family charter to unite a group of dispersed individuals with a common identity and a set of values. As always, feel free to come up with your own way of setting up the retrospective and introducing the theme to get everybody engaged. Events. You only need to think of the Simpsons or the stereotypical family Christmas to know that there's no guarantee that co-location ensures a happy and effective family. And the fact that long-distance relationships can also blossom shows that being physically separate from one another doesn't automatically doom a family relationship. We want to begin the events section by discovering a little bit about each other, and the format we'll use for this is the good old family newsletter. Pair everybody up. Of course, if you have an odd number of people, then it's okay to have a trio. Then set them the following task. Your job is to find out about the hobbies and interests of your colleague and write up a short couple of paragraphs summarizing your colleague and one or two of their recent highlights that will be included in the latest edition of our family newsletter. Give them 20 minutes to break off and find out about each other. Wherever possible, try and encourage people to pair with others that they know the least about, rather than the people they already know. After 20 minutes, ensure everyone comes back with their couple of paragraphs, and they can read them out to the rest of the team. Meanings. Families, as well as knowing about each other, also tend to have some common values and principles that bind them together. They also have a common identity, a sense of who they are as a family, and this helps guide their behaviors. We're now going to look at how we can apply some of these insights to our team and begin the process of creating our team's family charter. We're going to begin by asking everyone, in their groups of two to four people, to look at values. Ask them to think of their own family, families they know, and also famous families. These could even be fictional families from a movie or a book. And with those families in mind, ask them to take the sticky notes and marker pens and complete either of the following two sentences. A great family, or in a great family. They might come back with, a great family always apologizes after a fight, or in a great family everyone looks out for each other. Take one at a time from each mini group and add them to the value section of the family charter. If anyone is struggling to think of what a great family does, then invite them to think of what terrible families do and state the opposite. As a facilitator, encourage the team to cluster the stickies so similar values are next to each other and then consolidate, before leading the team through a discussion to prioritize in order to pick their top five values. Ensure that everyone is happy with the values that have been decided upon. If somebody seems a little unsure or unhappy, then explore that with the team and make it clear that it's important that everyone is happy with all of the values. Perhaps one of those values can be tailored slightly in order to make everyone comfortable with it, but be prepared to ask the team to change their selection to one that everyone is happy with, else. Instead of the family newsletter exercise, there are other exercises that can help create bonds between team members. Here are a couple of examples of others that you may wish to look at doing instead of or perhaps including in the retrospective. The first alternative that we love is called the Kevin Bacon game, where everyone shares a number of facts about themselves and their teammates attempt to find examples of where they share a connection. Another alternative exercise that might prove useful, especially in terms of helping create bonds between members, is the Penpal exercise. Here, team members from different locations are paired up and asked to write a Penpal letter to each other. While this is fast becoming a lost art in our digital era, Penpals tended to introduce themselves, their interests, their hobbies and their recent experiences, while also asking questions of their Penpal. They often included a picture or two as well. Decisions. Now we have some values that we agree on. You're going to guide the team in filling out the rest of the family charter. The next step is to look at the specific behaviors that the team are prepared to commit to in order to demonstrate that they are living the values of a great family as a team. Take each of the values one at a time and ask the team to come up with specific examples of a behavior that apply to this value by completing the sentence we commit to. For example, if the value is, in a great family everyone looks out for each other, then the behavior sticky might read, we commit to offering our help as soon as we suspect someone might need it. Invite the team to write these on stickies and add them to the behavior section of the family charter. Once the team have at least one or two commitments for each value, we then need the team to come up with their identity. Start off by asking the team to come up with a team name that they all feel connected to somehow. Perhaps they all like country music and computers so they might call themselves Johnny Cash. Add their team name to the team charter and then ask them to devise a logo or a symbol that represents that team name. And finally ask the team to come up with a motto. For example, team Johnny Cash might have the motto, we get rhythm and walk the line of quality ensuring no person or feature burns out in a ring of fire. Close the retrospective by asking everyone to look over their shared team charter and to sign their name to it. Remind them this is their team charter and it's up to them to put it into practice. You may wish to ask them what help they need from you in order to put this into practice. And it might also be worth reflecting on it and revisiting it in a future retrospective. Of course, if this is a distributed team, as is highly likely, and you are unable to get the support needed to bring them together for this kickoff meeting, then as I mentioned at the beginning, you will need to replace the physical aspects of this with more electronic alternatives. The good news is there are many online whiteboard and sticky note tools available, but do some research on the options beforehand.