Retromat: Analysis Ceremony: 108-9-41-3-109

Planning your next agile retrospective? Start with a random plan, change it to fit the team's situation, print it and share the URL. Or browse around for new ideas!

Is this your first retrospective? Start here!

Retromat.org – by Corinna Baldauf

Plan-ID:

New random retrospective plan
Search activities for ID or keyword

Close

Search titles, summaries & descriptions

Replaced by JS

◄

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.

►

◄

Gather data

Learning Matrix (#9)

Team members brainstorm in 4 categories to quickly list issues
Source: Agile Retrospectives

After discussing the data from Phase 2 show a flip chart with 4 quadrants labeled ':)', ':(', 'Idea!', and 'Appreciation'. Hand out sticky notes.

The team members can add their input to any quadrant. One thought per sticky note.
Cluster the notes.
Hand out 6-10 dots for people to vote on the most important issues.

This list is your input for Phase 4.

►

◄

Generate insights

Park Bench (#41)

Group discussion with varying subsets of participants
Source: Diana Larsen

Place at least 4 and at most 6 chairs in a row so that they face the group. Explain the rules:

Take a bench seat when you want to contribute to the discussion
One seat must always be empty
When the last seat is taken, someone else must leave and return to the audience

Get everything going by sitting on the 'bench' and wondering aloud about something you learned in the previous phase until someone joins. End the activity when discussion dies down.
This is a variant of 'Fish Bowl'. It's suited for groups of 10-25 people.

►

◄

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.

►

◄

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.

►

◄

(#)

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.