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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

Proud & Sorry (#33)

What are team members proud or sorry about?
Source: Agile Retrospectives
Put up two posters labeled 'proud' and 'sorry'. Team members write down one instance per sticky note. When the time is up have everyone read out their note and post it to the appropriate poster.
Start a short conversation e.g. by asking:
  • Did anything surprise you?
  • What patterns do you see? What do they mean for you as a team?
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Generate insights

Election Manifesto (#105)

Different parties present manifestos for change. Who will get your vote?
Source: Thomas Guest
Is there an election coming up in your country? Use it as a back drop for your team to convince each other of their change initiatives.

Ask the participants to split into political parties with 2 or 3 members. For 20 minutes, each party will work on a manifesto for change. What isn't working? How would they improve things?
Afterwards the parties meet again and their leaders present their manifestos. Be prepared for tough questions and heckling!
Now plan for a better world! Summarise the manifestos with sticky notes, one color per party. What do the parties agree on? Which promises are unrealistic and which can you achieve?
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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

Helped, Hindered, Hypothesis (#16)

Get concrete feedback on how you facilitated
Source: Agile Retrospectives
Prepare 3 flip chart papers titled 'Helped', 'Hindered', and 'Hypothesis' (suggestions for things to try out). Ask participants to help you grow and improve as a facilitator by writing you sticky notes and signing their initials so that you may ask questions later.
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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.