The Agile PM Toolkit Series - River of Life/Time Line

Another tool in my PM Toolkit is the "River of Life". A fantastic tool that can be used for varied purposes. I have used it for retros, personal journeys, milestone celebrations, or even presentations.

Today, I would like to talk about the "river of life" as a tool in projects. Below is a picture from 2 different projects where I have facilitated/attended the "river of life". In one project (the picture with orange and pink post-its) I have used it as a mechanism to identify things that have worked for us(orange post-its) and things that have challenged/not worked for us (pink post-its). In the second project we used to to identify things that we "learned", "liked", "lacked" and "longed". 

Below I have tried to capture step by step flow of all the activities that I do when I facilitate a river of life exercise. The exercise listed below was done as a part of milestone check and the team wanted to reflect on past and take a stock of the current situation.

Step 1

To run a river of life exercise, first determine a timeline (1 month, 3 months, 6 months) and determine what is it you want to achieve - a retro, a celebration, just talk etc.

Step 2

Get the team to start identify key events that have happened during this time. The key events can be anything that is significant to the team - a milestone reached, a team outing, some one joining the team etc. The idea of identifying key events is for the team to recollect what happened during that time. One event per post-it. Get the team to put it on the time line 

Step 3

Now do a walk through of the events, this helps in the team talking about incidences and recollecting them. Some times just this activity is sufficient and you may want to end the river of life here itself. I have used this when I just want the team to talk about things that have not been spoken about, things that I want the team to "get out of the system" and move on. At times I have also stopped here when I just wanted the team to reflect on things accomplished and celebrate :)

But if you want to do more then go to Step 4. Based on what the aim of my session is I ask the team to do the next set of activity. As an example, I will talk about how I have used it to discuss things that have worked and things that are challenging.

Step 4

Once the team has spoken about the timeline, I distribute the post-its again and ask the team to now think about things that have worked for them, or made them happy or made their life simpler, anything that has benefited the team. All the things have to be in relation to the timeline. The post-its will be added above the timeline. The higher the happiness factor the higher the post-it is put on the time line. 

Step 5

Similarly we repeat the exercise for all the things that have challenged, made you go slow, made you sad/unhappy or disturbed. Again the post-its are added below the timeline. The unhappier the event the lower it is placed. 

Step 6

Once all the events are added, walk through the events and talk about them. Some times the team discusses action items for avoiding the mistakes, actions to continue the good things. Don't mandate the action items - let them flow on its own and if they don't, its OK. The aim is to talk about it.

Finally, this is not an every day activity. Use it once in a while after some significant events have happened. It can also be used as a end of project retro.