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Set the stage

Surprise! (#136)

How do the toys in Kinder Surprise Eggs represent participants?
Source: Unknown via Andreas Drexhage
Prepare by buying a Kinder Surprise Egg (or something similar with a surprise toy inside) for each participant.

Hand out the eggs at the beginning of the retrospective. Eating the chocolate is optional, but everybody needs to open their egg and assemble the toy. Ask “How does your toy represent your role in this iteration?”

Give everyone a minute to think. Then go around the group for everyone to present their toy and how they relate to it.
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Gather data

Hit the Headlines (#119)

Which sprint events were newsworthy?
Source: Thomas Guest
Collect some news headlines in advance and take them to the retrospective to serve as examples. Try to gather a mixture of headlines: factual, opinion, review. Place the headlines where everyone can see them. Hand out sticky notes. Give team members 10 minutes to come up with their own headlines describing newsworthy aspects of the sprint. Encourage short, punchy headlines.
Stick the completed headlines to a whiteboard. If any cover the same news item, combine them. If any are unclear, ask the reporter for details. Vote on which news items to discuss and analyse in more depth.
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Generate insights

Braver (#145)

What does courage look like? What would the team do if they were bolder?
Source: Johanna Amlacher
Put up four posters with the following questions:
  • Which person in the team do you find courageous and how does courage show itself?
  • When have you felt insecure and wished you were braver?
  • What helps you to be brave?
  • What bold idea would you try as a team if you were 10 times bolder?
For each question do a round of:
  • 4 minutes of quiet time to answer the question on sticky notes
  • Ask people to read out and post their answers. (In a large group you can use 1-2-4-All to discuss answers in smaller groups first.)
  • Cluster similar answers
(We do it in several rounds to slowly warm up the participants to tackle the last question.)

After the last round, look at all the answers and facilitate a discussion. Ask participants what is standing out for them? What's unexpected? What patterns do they see? What do these patterns mean for them as a team?

Then ask the team to rate themselves on a scale of 1-10: How brave do they think they are? Followed by: What would be possible if they were one step higher on the scale?

Based on everything they’ve talked about, what would they like to try that’s somewhat bold yet safe enough?
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Decide what to do

Dot Voting - Start, Stop, Continue (#12)

Brainstorm what to start, stop & continue and pick the top initiatives
Source: Agile Retrospectives
Divide a flip chart into boxes headed with 'Start', 'Continue' and 'Stop'. Ask your participants to write concrete proposals for each category - 1 idea per index card. Let them write in silence for a few minutes. Let everyone read out their notes and post them to the appropriate category. Lead a short discussion on what the top 20% beneficial ideas are. Vote on it by distributing dots or X's with a marker, e.g. 1, 2, and 3 dots for each person to distribute. The top 2 or 3 become your action items.

(Check out Paulo Caroli's 'Open the Box' for an awesome variation of this activity.)
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Close the retrospective

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.
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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.