Retromat: Plan Your Agile Program A3: 18-110-8-49-16

Planning your next agile retrospective? Start with a random plan, change it to fit the team's situation, print it and share the URL. Or browse around for new ideas!

Is this your first retrospective? Start here!

Retromat.org – by Corinna Baldauf

Plan-ID:

New random retrospective plan
Search activities for ID or keyword

Close

Search titles, summaries & descriptions

◄

Set the stage

Check In - Amazon Review (#18)

Review the iteration on Amazon. Don't forget the star rating!
Source: Christian Heiß

Each team member writes a short review with:

Title
Content
Star rating (5 stars is the best)

Everyone reads out their review. Record the star ratings on a flip chart.
Can span whole retrospective by also asking what is recommended about the iteration and what not.

►

◄

Gather data

Movie Critic (#110)

Imagine your last iteration was a movie and write a review about it
Source: Isabel Corniche

Introduce the activity by asking: Imagine your last iteration was a movie and you had to write a review:

What was the genre of the movie (e.g. horror, drama, ...)?
What was the (central) theme? Describe in 2-3 words.
Was there a big twist (e.g. a bad guy)?
What was the ending like (e.g. happy-end, cliffhanger) and did you expect it?
What was your personal highlight?
Would you recommend it to a colleague?

Give each team member a piece of paper and 5 minutes to silently ponder the questions. In the meantime (or before the session) divide a flip chart in 7 columns headed with 'Genre', 'Theme', 'Twist', 'Ending', 'Expected?', 'Highlight', 'Recommend?'. When everyone has finished writing, fill out the flip chart while each participant reads out their notes.
Afterwards look at the finished table and lead a discussion about

What's standing out?
What patterns do you see? What do they mean for you as a team?
Suggestions on how to continue?

►

◄

Generate insights

5 Whys (#8)

Drill down to the root cause of problems by repeatedly asking 'Why?'
Source: Agile Retrospectives

Divide the participants into small groups (<= 4 people) and give each group one of the top identified issues. Instructions for the group:

One person asks the others 'Why did that happen?' repeatedly to find the root cause or a chain of events
Record the root causes (often the answer to the 5th 'Why?')

Let the groups share their findings.

►

◄

Decide what to do

Dot Voting - Starfish (#49)

Collect what to start, stop, continue, do more and less of
Source: Pat Kua

Draw 5 spokes on a flip chart paper, dividing it into 5 segments. Label them 'Start', 'Stop', 'Continue', 'Do More' and 'Do less'. Participants write their proposals on sticky notes and put them in the appropriate segment. After clustering stickies that capture the same idea, dot vote on which suggestions to try.

►

◄

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.

►

◄

(#)

Source:

►

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.