Retromat: Prepare Your Retro Activities: 114-87-41-72-15

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.

Meeting Satisfaction Histogram (#87)

Create a histogram on how well ritual meetings went during the iteration
Source: Fanny Santos

Prepare a flip chart for each meeting that recurs every iteration, (e.g. the Scrum ceremonies) with a horizontal scale from 1 ('Did not meet expectations') to 5 ('Exceeds Expectations'). Each team member adds a sticky note based on their rating for each of these meetings. Let the team discuss why some meetings do not have a rating of 5.
You can discuss improvements as part of this activity or in a later activity such as Perfection Game (#20) or Plus & Delta (#40).

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.

Divide the Dollar (#72)

How much is an action item worth to the team?
Source: Gamestorming

Hang up the list of possible actions. Draw a column next to it, titled 'Importance (in $)'. The team gets to spend 100 (virtual) dollars on the action items. The more important it is to them, the more they should spend. Make it more fun by bringing paper money from a board game such as Monopoly.

Let them agree on prices. Consider the 2 or 3 highest amount action items as chosen.

Appreciations (#15)

Let team members appreciate each other and end positively
Source: Agile Retrospectives who took it from 'The Satir Model: Family Therapy and Beyond'

Start by giving a sincere appreciation of one of the participants. It can be anything they contributed: help to the team or you, a solved problem, ...Then invite others and wait for someone to work up the nerve. Close, when no one has talked for a minute.

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.