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Retromat.org – by Corinna Baldauf
Plan-ID:
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Set the stage

Know your neighbour - Opening (#108)

How did your right neighbour feel during the iteration
Source: Fabián Lewkowicz
Ask each team member to briefly describe how their right neighbour felt during the iteration. Their neighbour confirms or corrects the guess.
Once all participants shared their best guess about how their teammates felt, you get an idea of how connected they are, how communication is flowing in your team and if people are aware of the feelings expressed, in some way, by others.

Consider closing with activity #109.
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Generate insights

Brainstorming / Filtering (#10)

Generate lots of ideas and filter them against your criteria
Source: Agile Retrospectives
Lay out the rules of brainstorming, and the goal: To generate lots of new ideas which will be filtered after the brainstorming.
  • Let people write down their ideas for 5-10 minutes
  • Go around the table repeatedly always asking one idea each, until all ideas are on the flip chart
  • Now ask for filters (e.g. cost, time investment, uniqueness of concept, brand appropriateness, ...). Let the group choose 4.
  • Apply each filter and mark ideas that pass all 4.
  • Which ideas will the group carry forward? Does someone feel strongly about one of the ideas? Otherwise use majority vote.
The selected ideas enter Phase 4.
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Generate insights

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?
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Set the stage

Check In - Quick Question (#3)

Ask one question that each participant answers in turn
Source: Agile Retrospectives
In round-robin each participant answers the same question (unless they say 'I pass'). Sample questions:
  • In one word - What do you need from this retrospective?
    When someone answers something that alerts you such as "help" or "protection", you have to react to that e. g. with "Is there something we can do right now to help?" oder "What kind of protection?"
  • What's something that caused problems last iteration?
  • If you could change one thing about the last iteration what would it be?

Avoid evaluating comments such as 'Great'. 'Thanks' is okay.
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Close the retrospective

Know your neighbour - Closing (#109)

How does your left neighbour feel about the retrospective
Source: Inspired by Fabián Lewkowicz
Ask each team member to guess if their left neighbour thinks this retrospective was a good use of their time and why. Their neighbour confirms or corrects their guess.

If you have set the stage with activity #108, make sure to go around the other direction this time.
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Retromat contains activities, allowing for combinations () 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 Mastodon. 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 trainings for scrum master certification and product owner certification. He also 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. Connect with him on LinkedIn, BlueSky, Mastodon, FB, Insta, Threads.