Retrospective Techniques

Correct Answer: Use 'Dot Voting' to vote for the most valuable improvements and prioritize them accordingly.

The Dot Voting technique allows team members to vote on a set of items, in this case, improvements, to democratically decide which ones are considered the most valuable and hence, should be prioritized. This approach is effective in situations where the number of possible improvements exceeds the team's capacity to address them all at once. The other options, while involving aspects of the Scrum framework and decision-making, don't offer a clear, democratic method for prioritizing actions based on collective team value.

Correct Answer: Implement the 'Lean Coffee' technique to structure the discussion and ensure everyone's viewpoints are considered.

The 'Lean Coffee' technique is a structured, but agenda-less meeting style that allows participants to build the agenda at the beginning of the meeting and democratically choose what to discuss. It encourages open discussion, ensures everyone's voice is heard, and can effectively address conflict by focusing on topics of highest interest. The 'Parking Lot' technique can help in managing off-topic discussions but might not resolve conflict. The 'Fishbowl Conversation' encourages active listening but may not be as effective in a retrospective setting where active participation from all members is needed. Enforcing quantitative data for disagreements might stifle valuable feedback based on personal experience, perceptions, and qualitative insights, hence might not be the best approach in a retrospective.

Correct Answer: Cause-and-effect diagram

The best method for identifying the reason behind the team's performance drop would be to use a Cause-and-Effect diagram. This technique is also known as an Ishikawa or fishbone diagram and is a visualization tool for categorizing the potential causes of a problem in order to identify its root causes. It helps in brainstorming to identify the causes and the effects in a problem. This would provide the team leader a platform to discuss and identify key issues contributing to the drop in the current performanceThe other techniques such as Pareto chart, Scatter diagram, and Histogram aren't as effective in this case. - A Pareto chart is a data presentation tool that aids in categorizing many causes and focus on the significant few. It may help in identifying the major impacting factors, but doesn't easily display how those factors might be interconnected. In a team's context, using this tool might complicate more than help, as there might be multiple factors at work at the same time- A scatter diagram is used for establishing the relationship between two variables. It's a helpful tool in identifying correlations, but it's not designed for crucially addressing and diagnosing a wide variety of potential causes of a problem, which is the current need. - A Histogram is a graphical representation of a frequency distribution, and it may not be able to provide meaningful insights for this scenario as the team leader is looking for reasons behind the drop, not just the frequency or trend.