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Set the stage

Give me a face (#114)

Participants show how they feel by drawing a face on a tangerine
Source: Afagh Zadeh
Each team member gets a sharpie and a tangerine with a sticky note asking: 'How do you feel? Please give me a face'. After all are done drawing you go around and compare the works of art and emotions. It's a light-hearted way to set the stage.
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Gather data

Repeat & Avoid (#80)

Brainstorm what to repeat and what behaviours to avoid
Source: Luis Goncalves
Head 2 flip charts with 'Repeat' and 'Avoid' respectively. The participants write issues for the columns on sticky notes - 1 per issue. You can also color code the stickies. Example categories are 'People', 'Process', 'Technology', ... Let everyone read out their notes and post them to the appropriate column. Are all issues unanimous?
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Generate insights

If I were you (#95)

What could sub-groups improve when interacting with others?
Source: Thomas Wallet
Identify sub-groups within the participants that interacted during the iteration, e.g. developers/testers, clients/providers, PO/developers, etc. Give participants 3 minutes to silently write down what they think their group did that negatively impacted another group. One person should be part of one group only and write stickies for all groups they don't belong to - 1 sticky per issue.

Then in turn all participants read their stickies and give them to the corresponding group. The affected group rates it from 0 ('It was not a problem') to 5 ('It was a big problem'). Thus you get insights and shared understanding about problems and can select some of them to work on.
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Decide what to do

Chaos Cocktail Party (#61)

Actively identify, discuss, clarify and prioritize a number of actions
Source: Suzanne Garcia via Malte Foegen
Everyone writes one card with an action that they think is important to do - the more specific (SMART), the better. Then team members go around and chat about the cards like in a cocktail party. Every chat pair discusses the actions on their two cards. Stop the chatting after 1 minute. Each chat pair splits 5 points between the two cards. More points go to the more important action. Organize 3 to 5 rounds of chats (depending on group size). At the end everyone adds up the points on their card. In the end the cards are ranked by points and the team decides how much can be done in the next iteration, pulling from the top.

Addendum: In many settings you might want to randomly switch the cards in the beginning and between discussions. In this way, neither of the point splitting parties has a stake in which of the cards gets more points. This is an idea by Dr. Sivasailam “Thiagi” Thiagarajan via Paul Tevis
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Close the retrospective

Feedback Door - Numbers (ROTI) (#14)

Gauge participants' satisfaction with the retro on a scale from 1 to 5 in minimum time
Source: ALE 2011, Corinna Baldauf
Put sticky notes on the door with the numbers 1 through 5 on them. 1 is the topmost and best, 5 the lowest and worst.When ending the retrospective, ask your participants to put a sticky to the number they feel reflects the session. The sticky can be empty or have a comment or suggestion on it.
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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.