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 Miroboard Mega Template
Are you running your retrospectives with Miro? Create prettier boards faster with the giant Retromat Miroboard Mega Template!

Check out the Mega Template
Retromat.org – by Corinna Baldauf
Plan-ID:
Replaced by JS
◄
Set the stage

Greetings from the Iteration (#85)

Each team member writes a postcard about the last iteration
Source: Filipe Albero Pomar
Remind the team what a postcard looks like:
  • An image on the front,
  • a message on one half of the back,
  • the address and stamp on the other half.
Distribute blank index cards and tell the team they have 10 minutes to write a postcard to a person the whole team knows (i.e. an ex-colleague). When the time is up, collect and shuffle the cards before re-distributing them. Team members take turns to read out loud the postcards they got.
►
◄
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

Pessimize (#74)

If we had ruined the last iteration what would we have done?
Source: Judith Andresen
You start the activity by asking: 'If we had completely ruined last iteration what would we have done?' Record the answers on a flip chart. Next question: 'What would be the opposite of that?' Record it on another flip chart. Now ask participants to comment the items on the 'Opposite'-chart by posting sticky notes answering 'What keeps us from doing this?'. Hand out different colored sticky notes to comment on the comments, asking 'Why is it like this?'.
►
◄
Decide what to do

Open Items List (#24)

Participants propose and sign up for actions
Source: Corinna Baldauf, inspired by this list
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.
►
◄
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.