Teams can run regular retrospectives, that focus on 1–2 concrete weekly actions to avoid complaint circles, Natan Žabkar Nordberg mentioned at QCon London. In his talk Creating Impactful Software Teams, he explained how you can rotate facilitators to build ownership, with each one bringing their own unique perspective. He suggested framing bigger changes as 4–6 week experiments, then vote to keep, tweak, or revert, ensuring learning and continuous improvement.
In an earlier article about Creating Impactful Software Teams That Continuously Improve, Žabkar Nordberg explained how culture shapes how we feel, work, and succeed. People thrive in different environments—some need autonomy, others structure. Trust must be given first, not earned. Leaders should guide, not control, fostering autonomy and safety.
Diverse and empowered teams are impactful teams. A session 0 helps set expectations and ensures that everyone is approaching the team in a compatible way, Žabkar Nordberg showed in the article Creating Impactful Teams through Diversity using Session 0.
If you aren’t doing regular retrospectives yet, please start now, Žabkar Nordberg suggested:
It really is one of the easiest ways to continuously improve your work environment and culture.
To make retrospectives work effectively, the main thing is to focus on smaller, concrete actions. If you do not complete actions, retrospectives can turn into a negative spiral, where all we do is complain about our situation, and nothing improves, Žabkar Nordberg explained:
It is perfectly ok and healthy to have a venting session here and there, but don’t let it spiral into an echo chamber of complaints.
Žabkar Nordberg suggested aiming for one or two small actions and ensuring that you complete something every single week. Smaller, continuous improvement helps more in the long term than the occasional grand gesture.
He also encouraged rotating retrospective facilitators. It is challenging to fairly represent one’s own ideas and opinions while facilitating the retrospective, as every person brings their own unique perspective, Žabkar Nordberg said. Having different people who facilitate retrospectives helps build ownership and engagement:
If you have someone on your team who wants to get started on running meetings and is inexperienced, a retrospective is a great way to start! Retrospectives are similar and well-defined, and different facilitators can inject some of their own ideas and initiatives, to highlight different discussion topics.
If you are the person running the retrospective, remember that it is ok to bring an agenda sometimes. Do you have a recurring issue that you want to talk about? Pick a retrospective format that fits it, and address it, Žabkar Nordberg said. Just make sure you bring up the issue and listen to what people say, instead of having a solution in mind and pushing for it, no matter what the rest of the team says, he added.
One of the difficulties in running retrospectives is that it can be difficult to agree on actions. This is especially true when you are talking about fundamental changes in ways of working, where people tend to have stronger preferences, and there is often more contention about the best way forward, Žabkar Nordberg explained:
In one of my teams, we started to regularly hit the hurdle of not getting to a clear agreement. That was when I introduced the concept of an “experiment”. We framed any action as a short-term change, usually 4-6 weeks. This was short enough that the whole team could commit to actively and consistently trying it out, no matter if they were originally for or against the idea. At the same time, it was long enough that we would actually see the impact of it.
The important part was what happened after the 4-6 week period was over, Žabkar Nordberg mentioned. They held a retrospective, either a separate one if it was a large change, or their regularly scheduled one if it was a smaller change. In that retrospective, they would explicitly vote for one of three options:
- Keep the change
- Keep the change, but tweak it
- Revert the change and go back to what we used to do
In case they cannot reach an agreement, the default decision would be to revert the change, Žabkar Nordberg explained:
This helped us keep any potential change as an actual experiment and ensured we are not just quietly forcing changes on the rest of the team. With this approach, everyone felt listened to, and we ensured a cycle of learning and improvement.
Try running an experiment or two and see if it works for you, Žabkar Nordberg concluded.
