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Plan-ID:
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Who said it? (#106)

Attribute quotes to team members and situations
Source: Beccy Stafford
Before the retro, spend some time looking through email threads, chat logs, ticket discussions, and the like. Collect quotes from the last iteration: Funny quotes, or quotes which without context sound a little odd. Write them down with the name of the person who said them.

Read out the quotes at the beginning of the retro, and ask the team to guess who said it - the source may not self-identify! Often the team will not only know who said it, but also talk about what was going on at the time.

Genie in a Bottle (#116)

Playfully explore unmet needs
Source: Özer Özker & Anke Bartels
Present the following scenario to the participants: You have freed a genie from its bottle and you're granted the customary 3 wishes. What do you wish for? Please make
  • one wish for yourself
  • one wish for your team
  • one wish for all the people in the world
Cheating (i.e. wishing for more wishes or more genies) is not allowed!

Let everybody present their wishes. Optionally you can then dot-vote on the best or most appreciated wishes.

Original 4 (#55)

Ask Norman Kerth's 4 key questions
Source: Norman Kerth
Norman Kerth, inventor of retrospectives, identified the following 4 questions as key:
  • What did we do well, that if we didn’t discuss we might forget?
  • What did we learn?
  • What should we do differently next time?
  • What still puzzles us?
What are the team's answers?

Circle of Questions (#11)

Asking and answering go around the team circle - an excellent way to reach consensus
Source: Agile Retrospectives
Everyone sits in a circle. Begin by stating that you'll go round asking questions to find out what you want to do as a group. You start by asking your neighbor the first question, e.g. 'What is the most important thing we should start in the next iteration?' Your neighbor answers and asks her neighbor a related question. Stop when consensus emerges or the time is up. Go around at least once, so that everybody is heard!

Elevenie (#144)

Write a short poem
Source: Stefanie Dinh
An Elevenie (German 'Elfchen') is a poem with 11 words on five lines – 1, 2, 3, 4 and 1 word per line respectively. Only do this with a team in which people enjoy working with each other. It's a wonderful activity to do with a team that is disbanding at the end of a project as a way to commerate the good times.

Hand out pens and paper and read out the instructions:
'We are going to each write a poem with 5 lines. Each line has a specific number of words. Don't worry, I'll guide you through each line, one by one. Write down 1 word that comes to mind when you think about our team (a feeling, a color, ...).
On the next line, describe this feeling with 2 words.
On the next line, add details with 3 words – What is it like? How does it smell or sound? What would you like to add?
On line 4, write down a sentence with 4 words, starting with 'I'. What do you associate with your feeling.
Take a moment to read your poem thus far. What 1 word comes to mind? This is the final word of your poem on line 5.'

Now you can go around and everybody who wants to, can read out their poem. Bring tissues, it can be quite moving.

(#)


Source:
Retromat contains 127 activities, allowing for 8349005 combinations (25x30x22x22x23+5) and we are constantly adding more.

Created by Corinna Baldauf

Corinna wished for something like Retromat during her Scrummaster years. Eventually she just built it herself in the hope that it would be useful to others, too. Any questions, suggestions or encouragement? You can email her or follow her on Twitter. If you like Retromat you might also like Corinna's blog and her summaries on Wall-Skills.com.

Co-developed by Timon Fiddike

Timon gives Scrum trainings. He mentors advanced scrum masters and advanced product owners. Human, dad, nerd, contact improv & tango dancer. He has used Retromat since 2013 and started to build new features in 2016. You can email him or follow him on Twitter. Photo © Ina Abraham.