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!
Ask 'Why do we do retrospectives?' Source: Pete Roessler
Go back to the roots and start into the retrospective by asking 'Why do we do this?' Write down all answers for everyone to see. You might be surprised.
Create a histogram on how well ritual meetings went during the iteration Source: Fanny Santos
Prepare a flip chart for each meeting that recurs every iteration, (e.g. the Scrum ceremonies) with a horizontal scale from 1 ('Did not meet expectations') to 5 ('Exceeds Expectations'). Each team member adds a sticky note based on their rating for each of these meetings. Let the team discuss why some meetings do not have a rating of 5. You can discuss improvements as part of this activity or in a later activity such as Perfection Game (#20) or Plus \& Delta (#40).
Prepare a flip chart with 3 columns titled 'What', 'Who', and 'Due'. Ask one participant after the other, what they want to do to advance the team. Write down the task, agree on a 'done by'-date and let them sign their name. If someone suggests an action for the whole team, the proposer needs to get buy-in (and signatures) from the others.
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.
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.
