Celebration Grid
The Celebration Grid is a one-page chart for retrospectives that sorts recent work by the kind of behaviour it was (a mistake, an experiment or a known good practice) and by whether it succeeded or failed. It is a Management 3.0 practice by Jurgen Appelo. The grid makes visible that experiments teach something whichever way they turn out, and directs celebration to learning and to practices that worked instead of to success alone.
Facilitation script
- 1
Draw the grid and explain the three columns and two rows with one example for each column from your own work.
5 min - 2
Silent writing: each person notes events, tasks and decisions from the period on sticky notes.
7 min - 3
Posting round: people place their notes in the grid and say in a sentence why each belongs there.
10 min - 4
Group discussion of the pattern: what was learned, what to repeat, where luck played a part.
13 min - 5
Agree the next one to three experiments and who runs them.
7 min - 6
Celebrate: name the learning and the practices worth keeping, and mark it in whatever way suits the team.
3 min
Tips
Most first-time grids are crowded in the practices column and nearly empty in the middle.
Say out loud that an empty experiments column is the finding: the team is repeating what it knows and learning little.
Be strict about the difference between a failed experiment and a mistake, because teams relabel mistakes as experiments to feel better and blame failed experiments as mistakes when under pressure.
Keep the celebration real but small, so it can happen every time.
Common pitfalls
Arguing at length about which cell a note belongs in, which uses up the time meant for the learning conversation
Using the mistakes column to name and blame individuals, after which people stop posting anything risky
Celebrating only the success row, which tells the team that failed experiments are still unwelcome
Ending without new experiments, so the next grid looks the same and the format feels pointless
Calling every unplanned failure an experiment after the fact, which hides mistakes the team could have avoided
Variations
Yay! Questions are the short form of the same idea and work as an opener for any retrospective or weekly meeting without drawing the grid. Ask two questions in turn: what did we do well by following our practices, and what did we learn by running experiments? Collect answers in a round or on notes, acknowledge both lists and then continue with the rest of the meeting; allow about 15 minutes. Other options: have each person fill in an individual grid before combining them, or run the grid for a single project release or customer feedback round. Remotely, use a shared whiteboard with the six cells prepared in advance.
Where it fits
When to use it
A team says it wants to experiment more but only talks about results in its retrospectives
A period with several trials, pilots or A/B tests has ended and the learning should be harvested before it is forgotten
A failure has just happened and the team needs a fair way to tell an honest experiment from an avoidable mistake
Retrospectives have become a list of complaints and need a format that starts from learning
A manager wants to show that failed experiments are acceptable and is ready to say so in the room
When not to use it
A serious incident needs a root-cause investigation: run an After Action Review or a structured post-incident review first
The team did nothing new in the period; with no experiments to place, a Starfish Retrospective or Start, Stop, Continue gives more to work with
Trust is low and people fear consequences for anything posted under mistakes; address safety first, for example by opening with the Retrospective Prime Directive
You need to prioritise a backlog of improvement ideas: use Dot Voting or an Impact & Effort Matrix after gathering them
Related methods
Frequently asked questions
What is Celebration Grid?▾
The Celebration Grid is a retrospective chart from Management 3.0, created by Jurgen Appelo. It has three columns for mistakes, experiments and practices and two rows for failure and success. Teams place recent events in the grid to see where they learned something and what is worth celebrating.
What is the difference between a mistake and a failed experiment?▾
A mistake is doing something you already knew was the wrong way to do it. A failed experiment is trying something new whose outcome was uncertain and finding that it did not work. The first teaches little; the second produces learning and is treated in the grid as worth celebrating.
What gets celebrated in a Celebration Grid?▾
Two things: learning from experiments, whether they succeeded or failed, and good practices that produced the expected result. The point is to reward the behaviour of trying and learning as well as doing the right thing, and not only the outcome.
What are Yay! Questions?▾
Yay! Questions are a related Management 3.0 practice made of two questions: what did we do well by following practices, and what did we learn by running experiments? They can open a retrospective or a regular team meeting in about 15 minutes. They can be used with the Celebration Grid or on their own.
How long does a Celebration Grid session take?▾
Plan 30 to 60 minutes for a team of 3 to 12 people, depending on how long the period under review is. The source does not prescribe a duration. If time is short, use the two Yay! Questions without the grid.
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Try it freeMethod descriptions on Workshop Weaver are original content written by our team, based on established facilitation practices. This method was inspired by work from Jurgen Appelo / Management 3.0.