A quiet moment before the sprint

We were about to start a new sprint, and the air in the room felt a little heavy. I’d just asked for a volunteer to lead the retrospective, and the quiet that followed was the kind you could feel. It wasn’t resistance, just that familiar, collective pause where everyone waits for someone else to move first.

The weight of an open question

I remember looking around at the team, their faces a mix of focus and slight hesitation. That silence wasn’t about not wanting to help; it was the uncertainty of who should step up. It’s a small thing, but in that moment, it felt like a tiny hurdle we had to clear together before we could even begin.I’d seen this pattern before. Leaving it open sometimes meant the same few people would eventually volunteer, almost by default. It wasn’t a bad system, but it didn’t feel entirely fair either. There was a need for something that removed the guesswork, something that just made the choice obvious for everyone.

Letting the wheel decide

So, I pulled up a simple spinner on the screen. I didn’t make a big speech about it. I just said we’d let it pick this time, and typed in everyone’s name. There was a slight shift in the room, a few shoulders relaxing. The pressure to decide was gone, replaced by a neutral, almost playful anticipation.When I clicked to spin, we all watched it go. For a second, it was just a colorful blur. Then it slowed, ticking past names until it landed. The person it chose gave a small, genuine laugh and nodded. There were no objections, no debates. It was settled.

A clearer path forward

That was it. The meeting could start. The person who was selected knew it was just chance, not a burden placed on them. And everyone else knew the choice was transparent, that it could just as easily have been them.

Back to the work

We moved into the retrospective agenda without any more friction. The energy in the room had changed. It was lighter, more focused. We’d navigated that initial silence not with a command, but with a simple, fair mechanism that did the deciding for us.