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Set the stage

How’s your battery? (#143)

Check in on everybody’s well-being
Source: Anh Bui
If your phone battery runs low you look for a charger. With human beings it is harder to tell when they need to recharge. That’s why we use this activity to ask explicitly: Prepare a flipchart by outlining one battery per participant.

Ask each participant to color in their battery to show how much energy they currently have. Reflect together on the results, e. g. by asking “What do you notice?” – especially if someone is low on energy (“What would help you save or even gain energy?”)

Depending on how much time you want to invest you can do rounds of collecting and reflecting on:
  • What costs you energy at work?
  • What gives you energy?
  • What can you do to gain energy – short-term / long-term?
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Gather data

Sailboat / Speedboat (#19)

Analyze what forces push you forward and what pulls you back
Source: Luke Hohmann, found at Mike Griffiths
Draw a sailboat (or speedboat) onto a flip chart paper. Give it big sails (motor) as well as a heavy anchor. Team members silently write on sticky notes what propelled the team forward and what kept it in place. One idea per note. Post the stickies to sails (motor) and anchor respectively. Read out each one and discuss how you can increase wind (motor power) and cut anchors.

Variation: Some people add an iceberg in the back of the image. The iceberg represents obstacles they already see coming.
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Generate insights

Snow Mountain (#118)

Address problematic burndowns and scope creep
Source: Olivier Fortier
This activity is helpful when a team is constantly dealing with additional requests and scope creep. Use the burndown chart of problematic sprints to draw snowy mountains with the same outline. Add a few trees here and there. Print drawings of kids in various sledging situations such as kid sledging down fast, kid sledging and being scared, kid with a sledge looking bored, etc. (You can use Google image search with 'kid sledging drawing').

In teams of 2 or 3, ask the team members to identify which kid's reaction goes with which part of the mountain.
Example: If the mountain is flat, the kid might be bored. If you're facing a wall, the kid might be scared.

You can then discuss the team's reaction facing their own burndowns.
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Decide what to do

SMART Goals (#13)

Formulate a specific and measurable plan of action
Source: Agile Retrospectives
Introduce SMART goals (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, timely) and examples for SMART vs not so smart goals, e.g.'We'll study stories before pulling them by talking about them with the product owner each Wednesday at 9am' vs. 'We'll get to know the stories before they are in our sprint backlog'.
Form groups around the issues the team wants to work on. Each group identifies 1-5 concrete steps to reach the goal. Let each group present their results. All participants should agree on the 'SMART-ness' of the goals. Refine and confirm.
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Close the retrospective

Know Your Meme (#134)

If the retrospective was a meme or gif, which would it be?
Source: Thorben Heins
Usually devices are frowned upon during a retrospective. In this activity the participants get to whip out their laptop or smart phone in order to find the meme or gif that best represents the retrospective. Give participants 3 minutes to find the meme and then go around the circle. Each participant shows their meme and briefly says why they chose 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.