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Retromat.org – by Corinna Baldauf
Plan-ID:
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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.
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Gather data

Meeting Satisfaction Histogram (#87)

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).
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Generate insights

Cause-Effect-Diagram (#25)

Find the source of problems whose origins are hard to pinpoint and lead to endless discussion
Source: Henrik Kniberg
Write the problem you want to explore on a sticky note and put it in the middle of a whiteboard. Find out why that is a problem by repeatedly asking 'So what?'. Find out the root causes by repeatedly asking 'Why (does this happen)?' Document your findings by writing more stickies and showing causal relations with arrows. Each sticky can have more than one reason and more than one consequence
Vicious circles are usually good starting points for actions. If you can break their bad influence, you can gain a lot.
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Decide what to do

Pitch (#73)

Ideas for actions compete for 2 available 'Will do'-slots
Source: Judith Andresen
[Caution: This game creates 'winners' and 'losers'. Don't use it if the team has power imbalances.]

Ask everyone to think of 2 changes they'd like to implement and write them down on separate index cards. Draw 2 slots on the board. The first team member puts their favorite change idea into the first slot. His neighbor puts their favorite into the second slot. The third member has to pitch her favorite idea against the one already hanging that she favors less. If the team prefers her idea, it's swapped against the hanging one. This continues until everyone has presented both their cards.

Try not to start the circle with dominant team members.
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Close the retrospective

Plus & Delta (#40)

Each participant notes 1 thing they like and 1 thing they'd change about the retro
Source: Rob Bowley
Prepare a flip chart with 2 columns: Head them with 'Plus' and 'Delta'. Ask each participant to write down 1 aspect of the retrospective they liked and 1 thing they would change (on different index cards). Post the index cards and walk through them briefly to clarify the exact meaning and detect the majority's preference when notes from different people point into opposite directions.
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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.