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!
Participants pick a postcard that represents their thoughts / feelings Source: Corinna Baldauf
Bring a stack of diverse postcards - at least 4 four times as many as participants. Scatter them around the room and instruct team members to pick the postcard that best represents their view of the last iteration. After choosing they write down three keywords describing the postcard, i.e. iteration, on index cards. In turn everyone hangs up their post- and index cards and describes their choice.
Explain an example of Value Stream Mapping. (If you're unfamiliar with it, check out this video or this printable 1-pager.) Ask the team to draw a value stream map of their process from the point of view of a single user story. If necessary, ask them to break into small groups, and facilitate the process if they need it. Look at the finished map. Where are long delays, choke points and bottlenecks?
Group discussion with varying subsets of participants Source: Diana Larsen
Place at least 4 and at most 6 chairs in a row so that they face the group. Explain the rules:
Take a bench seat when you want to contribute to the discussion
One seat must always be empty
When the last seat is taken, someone else must leave and return to the audience
Get everything going by sitting on the 'bench' and wondering aloud about something you learned in the previous phase until someone joins. End the activity when discussion dies down. This is a variant of 'Fish Bowl'. It's suited for groups of 10-25 people.
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, ...)
How does your left neighbour feel about the retrospective Source: Inspired by Fabián Lewkowicz
Ask each team member to guess if their left neighbour thinks this retrospective was a good use of their time and why. Their neighbour confirms or corrects their guess.
If you have set the stage with activity #108, make sure to go around the other direction this time.
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.
