SaMoLo, or the Same as, More of, Less of technique, is a fine tuning facilitation exercise with roots in early XP.

‘Same As’ are those traits that you value and don’t want to lose. Many traditional feedback methods end up glossing over these items and as a result the behaviors that should be reinforced, aren’t.

‘More Of’ are those traits that you want to encourage. It may be a newly acquired skill or the beginning of a behavior. Or it may be an area where something is lacking and you want to help ther person find a way of bridging the gap.

‘Less Of’ are those traits that have simply gone too far. They may be great traits, but eventually someone will ‘out Herods, Herod’ and things need to return to normal. – fairlygoodpractices.com

Thanks in part to Jeff Nielsen, I’ve discovered that SaMoLo can also be the sweet spot for easing new teams into iteration retrospectives.

1. It is easy to remember
2. More engaging than What worked? What didn’t?
3. Takes 30 to 40 minutes
4. Pairs well with other exercises

In a recent iteration retrospective I paired the SaMoLo technique with a basic time line exercise. Our team, which is somewhat new to Agile, had recorded when we opened and closed each User Story throughout the iteration. I decided to jog the team’s memory by taping the index cards up on a whiteboard in a time line format. (You’d be surprised how quickly we forget all that we’d accomplished over the last two weeks)

Once we spent the first few minutes reaching a consensus on our iteration time line, I moved onto the SaMoLo portion of the retrospective.

A tip for facilitators trying this technique, remember to set the expectation early on that each team member should contribute at least one Same as to the discussion. Also, I recommend that you exercise restraint and do not quickly write the team statements onto the whiteboard. Encourage conversations around each statement before writing, as that’s where most of the magic occurs in this exercise. The resulting dialogue is generally much more important than the statement itself.

After going around the room a few times with Same as, I moved onto the More of and Less of pieces of the discussion.

Another tip, feel free to combine both of these as it’ll save time. I’ve noticed that one team member’s More of can easily be illustrated as Less of the opposite at times, and depending on your team these may come out in different ways. As you can see in the picture above, we had only one Less of in this last iteration retrospective.

When I wrapped up the SaMoLo retrospective, I noticed something peculiar. I found that it was redundant to list out Action Items or Take Aways with owners. As strange as this may sound, the team found that merely documenting the Same as, More of and Less of items were enough for fine tuning their habits. Your mileage may vary on this part, and I’ll keep a running tab of things to ensure we aren’t rehashing the same issues in the next iteration.

In conclusion, I’ve found that SaMoLo is working rather well so far with our new Agile team. It fosters more conversation than What worked, What didn’t and illustrates things that we should keep doing well. It is fairly straightforward. It is not too vanilla, and on the other hand it is not too abstract or hard to grasp.

If you have SaMoLo retrospective stories please share them below!

[Update]

I am humbled by the responses from Esther Derby & Diana Larsen on this approach below. Diana has been kind enough to add this as an online addendum to the exercises listed in Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great.

Since I’ve published this post, we’ve tried this technique in another iteration retrospective with success. I’m now reviewing SaMoLo notes from previous retrospectives as I facilitate. For example, before going around the room with Same as I review the Same as notes from the previous retrospective to help remind the team of what we said.

I’m looking forward to fine tuning the approach in the future!