ScrumDo Journaling App takes natural sensemaking principles and makes them practical, efficient, and scalable. Here is how it is used and how the practice helps resolve retrospecting challenges.

A questionnaire is developed to focus on a general issue or concern - in this case what happens in a sprint. Participants are asked to share a story or anecdote about an experience via one or more open-ended question prompts. Open-ended prompts guide participants to recall experiences related to the questionnaire’s focus. They are then asked a small number of quantitative follow-up questions. The follow-up questions are intentionally ambiguous, designed to allow the participant to provide context and meaning to the narrative they just submitted with no “right” or “wrong” answers.

A story is a normal narrative text. The small number of questions use graphic shapes representing a spectrum of possible meanings that individuals select as well as more traditional textual options that individuals select, all based on their story. All stories and answers are submitted digitally. Questions can look like the following.

The person sharing an experience is best able to make sense of their own experience. The participants themselves not only choose what their narrative will be about they alone assign meaning to their own narratives.
Active Sensemaking questions are designed to be ambiguous and open-ended. There are no “right” or “wrong” answers and thus no way to “game” the instrument.

This reduces expert bias. The principle of reducing expert bias and social coercion through “self-signification” is a key tenet of active sensemaking.
This liberates individuals to record their experiences without interference. Each team member can contribute on their own with less regard to who is listening, what they think, or what they might do with the story or to them. Introverts and extroverts are on the same playing field. This approach supports better participation.

Respondents are encouraged to provide more than one experience or story. Each story is relevant in its own way. Here more is better.
Team members can record individual experiences soon after something happens while fresh in mind - making their submissions more accurate and eliminating the loss of memory over time. Recording stories with context and meaning anchors events and experiences to real things that people can work with. Guessing is also reduced, resulting in more accurate insights and decisions.

Active sensemaking side-steps the problems of traditional statistical surveys. Surveys restrict what can be answered and presume on what answers are possible. Furthermore, surveys generate average results, negating context with meaning, and negating individual voices. (How many times have you completed surveys and left feeling like you would not be heard or understood?) This way every voice counts.