The rose, thorn, and bud exercise is a classic retrospective format that's excellent at helping teams better understand what's working, what their challenges are, and what they can do to work towards continuous improvement.
At its core, the Rose, Bud, Thorn exercise is a dynamic retrospective facilitation technique. Designed to inspire honest reflection, this retrospective template uses a botanical metaphor to help teams identify their achievements, potential growth areas, and challenges. Like the flower it's named after, the Rose, Thorn, Bud template is all about growth.
The Rose represents the things your team is doing well, the Bud refers to promising ideas that could blossom into something beautiful, and the Thorn signifies challenges that the team should address.
The agile exercise asks participants to reflect on three categories and then write down their thoughts for each category column. The three categories are below:
This is the column where participants should leave positive reflections. What we're the accomplishments, major wins, and successes?
This is where the negative reflections are placed. What were the major challenges, difficulties, or areas where individuals wished they had more support or help?
Place areas of potential here. What are the future and potential areas of opportunity and growth for the team? What should the team do or try to be more successful in the future?
The Rose, Bud, Thorn retrospective is generic enough to work for any team that wishes to gain an honest team assessment and review a past project, sprint, or even period of time. This methodology is used by agile coaches, engineering managers, product leaders, and even by designers as a design thinking exercise.
If you want to gain real value and insights from this retrospective exercise, you'll need to understand how to be a great facilitator. The goal is to promote transparent communication, ensure everyone's voice is heard, and create a culture of mutual respect, understanding, and psychological safety. Only then will everyone feel more comfortable to share their Roses, Buds, and Thorns.
Some teams find it useful to kickoff the rose, bud, thorn activity with an icebreaker. It sets a positive tone and helps engage individuals with something light before going deeper and getting more serious. One rose, bud, thorn icebreaker to consider is the positive pause icebreaker.
It's simple - ask each team member to share one positive thing about their life. Something positive they've experienced recently, something they're looking forward to, or anything in between. Maybe they saw a good concert recently, maybe they had coffee with a friend they haven't seen in a while, maybe they started taking piano lessons and are excited about that.
Big or small, it doesn't matter. By starting on a positive note, participants start the Rose, Bud, Thorn retrospective with a more positive and open mindset. This rose, thorn, bud icebreaker serves as an excellent primer for this retrospective.
Although the Rose, Bud, Thorn exercise is a great tool for reviewing a specific project, sprint, or period of time, it won't necessarily give you a comprehensive and more long-term perspective on how your team is doing. The Team Health Check model aims to do exactly that.
The Team Health Check model, also known as the Squad Health Check, guides participants though a series of questions that aim to get a full understanding of how well your team works together, how satisfied they are, and their overall happiness. There are a number of Squad Health Check templates that work for any team.
To learn more about the Squad Health Check model and how to facilitate them, click here to read our ultimate guide. RetroWave allows you to conduct squad health check retrospectives with in-person or remote teams. Consider running a squad health check today.