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Plan-ID:
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Check In - Quick Question (#3)

Ask one question that each participant answers in turn
Source: Agile Retrospectives
In round-robin each participant answers the same question (unless they say 'I pass'). Sample questions:
  • In one word - What do you need from this retrospective?
    When someone answers something that alerts you such as "help" or "protection", you have to react to that e. g. with "Is there something we can do right now to help?" oder "What kind of protection?"
  • What's something that caused problems last iteration?
  • If you could change one thing about the last iteration what would it be?

Avoid evaluating comments such as 'Great'. 'Thanks' is okay.

#tweetmysprint (#97)

Produce the team's twitter timeline for the iteration
Source: Thomas Guest
Ask participants to write 3 or more tweets on sticky notes about the iteration they've just completed. Tweets could be on the iteration as a whole, on individual stories, a rant, or shameless self-promotion - as long as they are brief. Hash tags, emoticons, attached pictures, @usernames are all welcome. Allow ten minutes to write the tweets, then arrange them in a timeline and discuss themes, trends etc. Now invite participants to favorite, retweet and write replies to the tweets, again following up with discussion.

The Worst We Could Do (#69)

Explore how to ruin the next iteration for sure
Source: Corinna Baldauf
Hand out pens and sticky notes. Ask everyone for ideas on how to turn the next iteration / release into a certain desaster - one idea per note. When everyone's finished writing, hang up all stickies and walk through them. Identify and discuss themes.
In the next phase turn these negative actions into their opposite.

Circles & Soup / Circle of Influence (#29)

Create actions based on how much control the team has to carry them out
Source: Diana Larsen who adapted it from 'Seven Habits of Highly Effective People' by Stephen Covey and 'Circle of Influence and Concern' by Jim Bullock
Prepare a flip chart with 3 concentric circles, each big enough to put stickies in. Label them 'Team controls - Direct action', 'Team influences - Persuasive/recommending action' and 'The soup - Response action', from innermost to outermost circle respectively. ('The soup' denotes the wider system the team is embedded into.) Take your insights from the last phase and put them in the appropriate circle.
The participants write down possible actions in pairs of two. Encourage them to concentrate on issues in their circle of influence. The pairs post their action plans next to the respective issue and read it out loud. Agree on which plans to try (via discussion, majority vote, dot voting, ...)

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.