The ESVP is a short activity to measure participants’ engagement for the meeting at hand.
Running the activity:
- Ask the participants to report anonymously their attitude toward the retrospective as an Explorer, Shopper, Vacationer or Prisoner.
* Explorers – Are eager to discover new ideas and insights. They want to learn everything they can about the iteration/release/ project.
* Shoppers – Will look over all the available information and be happy to go home with one useful new idea
* Vacationers – Aren’t interested in the work of the retrospective, but are happy to be away from the daily grind.
* Prisoners – Feel they have been forced to attend and would rather be doing something else. - Collect the results and create a histogram to show the data.
- Acknowledge the results and lead a discussion about what the results mean for the group.
This is a good variation for the Safety Check, as it asks about people participation from a different perspective. You can follow up with a variation of Creating Safety (” Why do you feel like a prisoner?”). This activity is described in the remarkable Agile Retrospectives book.
Remote-team adivice: This activity works well for remote teams. Use a remote board of your choice.