This is another short reflection episode. And today we’re going to talk about roles during retrospectives.

If you’re a facilitator, you probably might have found yourself in a situation where you’re trying to facilitate a conversation while you’re keeping track of the time for this session or activity. And you’re also like taking notes about what’s being said on a whiteboard. And that can be stressful, and especially when, when you have larger groups. Now, some of those roles can be assigned or can be a way to make the retrospective more engaging for your team. For example, timekeeping,”Who would like me a volunteer today to keep track of time for this activities?” Of course, as a retrospective facilitator, you should prepare your activities before your retrospective. And so you will simply hand over to the timekeeper, the list of activities and how long does activity should take.

Now, other activities like taking notes also can be uploaded to volunteers in the group. And that’s even for tracking action items. And if you agree to use SMART action item–or any other way to make them more specific and measurable–maybe that person can remind the group “Hey, this action item is it like specific? And measurable? By when is it going to be done? Who is going to do it?”. So again, as a facilitator, you’re not alone. There is a group of people that you are facilitating for that can help with some of those activities.

And again, before the retrospective as a facilitator, you’re probably the individual that will go through and prepare a retrospective plan. But that can be perhaps Don pairing with someone else on the group. Perhaps someone that is interested in the facilitation role and eventually airing during the retrospective itself and ultimately have this person rotate as a facilitator.

After the retrospective, there’s usually action items. And again, hopefully someone part of the group took note of those. And there are specific, measurable, relevant time bound. And maybe we have someone else that during the week will make sure that those action items are follow true to keep track of that.

So I hope this short reflection will help you in the next retrospective. As a facilitator remember you’re not alone. Maybe you’re a tech lead or a scrum master or a product manager but that doesn’t mean that you need to run the whole show. There is a team of individuals that are probably willing and excited to join you.