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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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Gather data

4 Ls - Loved, Learned, Lacked, Longed for (#78)

Explore what people loved, learned, lacked and longed for individually
Source: Mary Gorman & Ellen Gottesdiener probably via groupmap.com
Each person brainstorms individually for each of these 4 questions:
  • What I Loved
  • What I Learned
  • What I Lacked
  • What I Longed For
Collect the answers, either stickies on flip charts or in a digital tool if you're distributed. Form 4 subgroups, on for each L, read all notes, identify patterns and report their findings to the group. Use this as input for the next phase.
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Generate insights

Cause-Effect-Diagram (#25)

Find the source of problems whose origins are hard to pinpoint and lead to endless discussion
Source: Henrik Kniberg
Write the problem you want to explore on a sticky note and put it in the middle of a whiteboard. Find out why that is a problem by repeatedly asking 'So what?'. Find out the root causes by repeatedly asking 'Why (does this happen)?' Document your findings by writing more stickies and showing causal relations with arrows. Each sticky can have more than one reason and more than one consequence
Vicious circles are usually good starting points for actions. If you can break their bad influence, you can gain a lot.
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Decide what to do

Take a Stand - Line Dance (#48)

Get a sense of everyone's position and reach consensus
Source: Nick Oostvogels
When the team can't decide between two options, create a big scale (i.e. a long line) on the floor with masking tape. Mark one end as option A) and the other as option B). Team members position themselves on the scale according to their preference for either option. Now tweak the options until one option has a clear majority.
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Close the retrospective

Helped, Hindered, Hypothesis (#16)

Get concrete feedback on how you facilitated
Source: Agile Retrospectives
Prepare 3 flip chart papers titled 'Helped', 'Hindered', and 'Hypothesis' (suggestions for things to try out). Ask participants to help you grow and improve as a facilitator by writing you sticky notes and signing their initials so that you may ask questions later.
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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.