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Plan-ID:
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3 for 1 - Opening (#70)

Check satisfaction with iteration results, communication & mood all at once
Source: Judith Andresen
Prepare a flip chart with a co-ordinate plane on it. The Y-axis is 'Satisfaction with iteration result'. The X-axis is 'Number of times we coordinated'. Ask each participant to mark where their satisfaction and perceived touch points intersect - with an emoticon showing their mood (not just a dot).Discuss surprising variances and extreme moods.
(Vary the X-axis to reflect current team topics, e.g. 'Number of times we pair programmed'.)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (#121)

Collect what team members perceived as good, bad and non-optimal
Source: Manuel Küblböck
Put up three sections labeled ‘The Good’, ‘The Bad’ and ‘The Ugly’. Give everyone 5 minutes to note down one or more things per category from the last sprint. One aspect per post-it. When the time is up, have everyone stick their post-its to the appropriate labels. Cluster as you collect, if possible.

Set Course (#113)

Imagine you're on a voyage - Cliffs and treasures await
Source: Katrin Dreyer
Imagine you're navigating a boat instead of a product or service. Ask the crew the following questions:
  1. Where is a treasure to be found? (New things worth trying)
  2. Where is a cliff to be safe from? (What makes the team worry)
  3. Keep course for ... (What existing processes go well?)
  4. Change course for... (What existing processes go badly)

Low Hanging Fruit (#63)

Visualize promise and ease of possible courses of actions to help pick
Source: Tobias Baldauf
Reveal a previously drawn tree. Hand out round index cards and instruct participants to write down the actions they would like to take - one per card. When everyone's finished, collect the cards, shuffle and read them out one by one. Place each 'fruit' according to the participants' assessment:
  • Is it easy to do? Place it lower. Hard? More to the top.
  • Does it seem very beneficial? Place it more to the left. Value is dubious at best? To the right.
The straightforward choice is to pick the bottom left fruit as action items. If this is not consensus, you can either have a short discussion to agree on some actions or dot vote.

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.