Plans for Retrospectives
Corinna Baldauf
This book is for sale at
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This version was published on 2021-02-14
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© 2013 - 2021 Corinna Baldauf
Contents
Hi there! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1
The Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
What is a retrospective? . . . . . .
Ground Rules . . . . . . . . . . . .
What is the goal of retrospectives?
Why do we vary activities? . . . .
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2
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4
6
8
About this book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Terminology and Icons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
10
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16
Building Blocks . . . . . . . . . .
Lean Coffee (#51) . . . . . . .
Dotvoting . . . . . . . . . . .
Gladiator Vote / Roman Vote
Was that a decision? . . . . .
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17
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20
General Purpose Plans
Learning Matrix . .
Feelings . . . . . . .
I like, I wish . . . . .
For many people . .
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21
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Newly-formed Teams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Expectations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
37
37
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CONTENTS
Laundry Day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
New to Agile . . . . . . . .
Agile Principles . . . . .
Story Time . . . . . . .
Support Ticket Overload
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42
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45
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52
56
Houston, we have a problem . . . . . . . . .
Bad vibes? Appreciation! . . . . . . . . .
Complaining – not taking responsibility .
Reluctant Participants . . . . . . . . . . .
Follow through & a new phase . . . . . .
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59
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64
68
73
Houston, it’s a really big problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Company Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Writing the Unspeakable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
75
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81
Time to say goodbye . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
85
Planning a retrospective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
88
Inventing custom activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Bonus plan: A Christmas Retro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
91
93
Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
My facilitation style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
Tuckman’s Stages of Team Development . . . . . . . . . 100
Hi there!
Retromat¹ is a tool for experienced facilitators. It gives you dozens
of ideas and it’s up to you to pick activities that form a cohesive
whole. That’s great for experienced facilitators and potentially
overwhelming for beginners.
For a while now, I’ve been wondering how to better support
beginners. This book is the result of me thinking that complete
plans are better for getting started².
Hopefully, it’s useful for more experienced facilitators as well. I
certainly like to see other people’s approaches. Here you get to see
mine.
Before we dive into the plans, let’s make sure that we’re all on the
same page.
¹https://retromat.org/
²Exception: The plans in “Houston, it’s a really big problem” are not meant for beginners.
You use them in tense situations that can escalate. Get someone experienced to help.
The Basics
We’ll quickly go over
•
•
•
•
•
what a retrospective is,
how to run a good one,
the groundrules,
why we do them and
why we vary activities, instead of always running the same
retro.
Feel free to skip to the next chapter, if you know all of this already.
What is a retrospective?
A retrospective is an opportunity to learn and improve. It is time
set aside – outside of day-to-day routine – to reflect on past events
and behaviors. In its simplest form the team answers 3 questions:
• What worked well?
• What didn’t work well?
• What will we do differently from now on?
In none-agile environments retrospectives are sometimes done after
a project is finished as a “post mortem” to derive “lessons learned”.
Those tend to be long meetings.
In constrast, in agile environments, a retrospective is short and done
often (e.g. 90 minutes for a 2-week iteration). Thus the project is still
in progress and you can address issues jeopardizing the project’s
success in time, hopefully keeping it on track.
3
The Basics
In Scrum, retrospectives belong to the cast of regular sprint meetings. In Kanban there’s a variety of ways to “schedule” retrospectives. In Lean A3′s can serve the same purpose.
Who takes part?
“The team” whoever that includes in your context. In Scrum it’s
typically the dev team plus product owner and the scrum master
facilitates³. If you have a specific topic that includes / affects people
from outside the team invite them to work on a joint solution.
What does a retrospective look like?
In its simplest form, a bunch of people
• meet
• talk about stuff and
• agree on some actions (that will hopefully improve the situation).
Most retrospectives are a more sophisticated than that. Many
follow the 5 phases suggested in “Agile Retrospectives” by Esther
Derby and Diana Larsen⁴. It is the Gold Standard of books about
retrospectives. It’s how I started and I highly recommend it for
beginners. The 5 Phases of a Retrospective are:
• Set the stage – Time to “arrive”, get into the right mood and
focus on the goal
³The Scrum term “dev team” includes all people building the product together as a crossfunctional team, not just developers. At my place of work “dev teams” can also include UX
designers, copywriters and customer support.
⁴https://www.agilealliance.org/resources/books/agile-retrospectives-making-good-teamsgreat/
4
The Basics
• Gather data – Help everyone remember and create a shared
pool of information
• Generate insight – Why did things happen this way? Any
patterns? See the big picture
• Decide what to do – Pick what to work on and plan concrete
steps of action
• Close the retrospective – How could the retrospectives
improve?
You can support each phase with an activity to spark ideas and
interaction. Several activities in order are a plan. This book contains
plans with activities that work well together.
What is a retrospective NOT?
1. Another meeting in which talk is cheap but no change follows
– If retrospectives don’t result in change they are a waste of
time.
2. A blame game – Retrospectives are not about ass coverage
and assigning blame. In fact, some facilitators start their retrospectives by reading out the “Retrospective Prime Directive”:
Ground Rules
The Prime Directive of Retrospectives by Norman Kerth reminds
everyone to stay collaborative, constructive and focussed on solutions rather than blame:
The Basics
“Regardless of what we discover, we understand and
truly believe that everyone did the best job they could,
given what they knew at the time, their skills and
5
6
The Basics
abilities, the resources available, and the situation at
hand.”
We can’t change the past. But we can influence the future. Results
are better if we stay curious rather than be accusatory – in retrospectives and most other situations as well.
If you don’t like the specific wording of the Prime
Directive, you’re not alone. Google for one of the
many alternatives or come up with your own. Take
care to keep the spirit intact!
The second common ground rule is:
“What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”
To enable candor and high levels of trust, retrospectives are confidential. You want people to openly share their thoughts. That is
less likely to happen if they are afraid to feed the rumor mill. That’s
why we stress confidentiality. The only information that seeps out
of retrospectives are the action items.
Some facilitators read out both the Prime Directive and the Vegas
Rule in the beginning of each retrospective to remind everyone.
What is the goal of retrospectives?
Spoiler Alert: We’re not just doing retros because the Scrum Guide⁵
says so. In my retrospectives I try to reach two major goals:
⁵https://www.scrumguides.org/
7
The Basics
Change
As a result of the retrospective, the team should try something
new. An experiment. Obviously, you would like your experiment to
improve things, but they won’t always. You have to try things out
to see if they are an improvement or not. Aim for small experiments.
They have a higher chance of actually being implemented. If
an experiment works: Great! If it doesn’t you haven’t invested
much and can try something else. Rinse and repeat for continuous
improvement.
It’s also better to limit yourselves to few experiments. If you’ve got
lots of experiments, chances are very high that none of them will
be carried out. If you’ve only got 1-3 they have a better chance of
actually being implemented.
Experiments come in two flavors: Action Items (AIs) and Rule
Changes. An AI is a concrete action that someone will do: “schedule a meeting”, “tidy-up test-suite”, “talk to the Ops team”, …
Rule changes mean that the team will try to work together differently: “everybody will answer these 3 questions in the daily
standup”, “we will groom upcoming stories every Wed 3pm”, “we
will prepare the product demo the day before the review”, …
The team will try the new rule for a period of time, e.g. 2 iterations
(whatever makes sense to see the rule in action). When the trial
period is up, they review the rule to see if it solved their problem.
Many teams have a “Working Agreement” to list all team rules.
Disclaimer: Because I’m old (okay, middle-aged) and set in my
ways, I usually say only “Action Items” and mean both AIs and
rule changes.
Shared understanding
Everybody sees the world differently. The retrospective is an opportunity to realize that there are many different interpretations and
8
The Basics
reactions to any given event. I make sure that everyone’s voice is
heard.
Sometimes a retrospective does not result in any experiments. That
is okay if it is an exception and the team members learned a lot
about each other and how they tick. The new shared understanding
will then – hopefully – result in change without concrete action
items.
Why do we vary activities?
The many activities in Retromat imply that you will vary your
retrospectives – this iteration’s retro will have different activities
from the next one and the one after that.
Why, though? Why not always run the same one? Why not always
run the same multi-purpose retro if it has proven to work?
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over
and over again, but expecting different results.” – Albert
Einstein
I wouldn’t call it insanity. It is very human to double down on
something we think should be working, even when it doesn’t.
Applied to retrospectives:
If we keep asking the same questions, we will keep getting the
same answers. Different activities ask different questions. Even a
slightly different question can get participants to think in a new
way. Switching the point of view or using metaphors open up the
possibility of profound change. Carefully picked activities shine
a light on issues that the team was unaware of or shied away
from. That’s why it’s good to vary activities – not only to prevent
boredom.
The Basics
9
There are some teams who love predictability and ask to always
have the same retro. When a team expresses this wish I negotiate
a “for every X retros that we follow your wish, I ‘get’ one, where I
pick” or something along those lines. That respects the team while
making sure that I am still able to address problems and help the
team grow in the retrospectives.
About this book
Context
Every retrospective is run in a specific context: you, the team,
its members and the wider organization. And our retrospectives
reflect that. For example, if trust is low, anonymity becomes more
important.
I’ve thought very hard about the context for my retrospectives,
because it influenced all the plans in this book. I’m sharing the
retrospectives that I actually run, not the ones I think I should be
running. I think I should run retros that adhere to the ideal from
the book “Agile Retrospectives”⁶. The retros I actually run use the
5 phases as a guideline but not all phases are always distinctly
present.
You might know that Retromat is modeled after the 5 phases. Yet,
in the majority of my retros, there is no 1:1 mapping of activities
to match these phases for the 3 inner phases: Phases 2-3 or 3-4 are
usually kind of merged and do not always get a specific activity
dedicated to them. The majority of my retros are general purpose
retrospectives in which I let the team come up with topics.
There is a reason, I run my retros the way I do. This is my context:
Team Maturity: High
Since 2010, I’ve worked at sipgate, a telephony provider in Germany.
Coincidentally, sipgate started using Scrum at the same time. In any
⁶https://www.agilealliance.org/resources/books/agile-retrospectives-making-good-teamsgreat/
11
About this book
given team, the majority of team members have been working in
an agile way for years. There are a lot of things we have already
figured out.
That’s why I rarely get to use the plans in the “The Team is New to
Agile” chapter. These plans address issues that commonly pop up
when teams switch to agile.
For the same reason I do not usually read out the Vegas Rule and the
Prime Directive at the beginning of retrospectives. sipgaters have
internalized them. I would absolutely repeat them every time if the
company and the team were new to agile.
How often do I see of the team: Rarely
I am not a Scrum Master anymore. I facilitate retrospectives for
teams without a dedicated Scrum Master. That means that I don’t
experience their daily routines.
If there is a major disruption, I hear about it. Small stuff passes
me by unnoticed. That’s why I am dependent on the team setting
topics.
If you are sitting with your team every day you will likely notice
things that make you prefer a targeted retro rather than a general
purpose one.
Team Power Balance: Even
sipgate has a 2-level hierarchy: The CEOs and everyone else. Within
a team, nobody is the boss of anybody else. We see Product Owners
as part of the team and they are always present in retrospectives.
12
About this book
Team Size: +/- 7 people
We are currently 180 colleagues working in about 20 teams. Teams
are at most 12 people, usually more like 7 peole.
Time / Duration: +/- 65 min
Teams work in 1 or 2 week iterations. Most run 60 or 90 minute
retrospectives every 2 weeks. Full disclosure: In the 60-minute ones
I regularly fail to stay within the time limit. It routinely takes 65
minutes and, when pressed, I drop the closing activity sadface
The plans in this book come with time estimates for each activity.
They add up to roughly 65 min. With a team of up to 8 people you
can shorten most plans in this book to fit within 60 minutes. But
you will have 0 slack left.
If you do longer retros, this gives you more slack. If your retros are
similar to mine, you can use up the slack towards the end, when
it’s time to get out of discussion mode and decide what to do.
How long an activity takes often depends on the team size. The
time estimates I give here are comfortable for groups of 6-8. Assume more for bigger groups. Also allow more time for remote
retrospecitves to deal with uncooperative technology.
Agenda: Not posted
At sipgate, I never post the agenda, because my retros are short and
everybody knows the underlying structure.
For longer retros (say, 90 min and longer) I would post an agenda
and talk through it briefly at the beginning. I’d also have one if the
participants were new to retrospectives.
13
About this book
Materials: Whiteboards and sticky notes
By default, I use whiteboards and whiteboard markers, but you can
replace these with flipchart & flipchart markers or even a meta plan
pin board. Whatever you feel most comfortable with.
I use whiteboards because that’s what’s available in every sipgate
room and I’m an ad-hoc person. Feel free to pre-create elaborate
flipcharts if you like drawing them. In fact, if you’re new to
facilitation, err on the side of preparing too much rather than too
little. With time you will learn what really needs a lot of prep work
and what you can wing in a pinch.
By default, I use sticky notes. When activities speak of “index
cards” I will still use sticky notes, just bigger ones. If you feel more
comfortable with index cards, use those.
Room Setup
At sipgate we are all co-located (pre-Corona anyway) that’s why
this book is based on retrospectives with everyone in the same room.
Most activities can be adapted to work remotely⁷.
If an activity relies on people being physically present there is a box
below it with an alternative for remote settings.
Just in case we get to work co-located ever again: For bigger teams
I set up the chairs in a flat u-shape around the whiteboards, with
me sitting at one end of the u.
In small teams (6 people or less) I tend to just have everyone sitting
around a small table. That means that some people have to turn to
see the whiteboards but it makes conversations easier. I try to not
sit at one of the ends of the table to increase the likelihood that team
members will talk to each other, rather than towards me.
⁷https://retromat.org/blog/can-you-adapt-any-activity-for-a-remote-retrospective/
About this book
14
Now that we’ve covered context, let’s double back to the phases:
“Agile Retrospectives” is based on the assumption that each retrospective has one topic. My general purpose retros are never singlefocus. In “Gather data” we look at all the things that are on people’s
minds, e.g. with “Speedboat”⁸. Afterwards we talk through 2-4 of
the raised topics with Lean Coffee (see next chapter).
And suddenly linear phases stop making sense. It would be difficult
to first talk about 3 topics in depth and at the end come up with
action items for all of them. Instead we talk about 1 topic in depth
and create an action item for this topic. And then start with the
next topic. Like in this highly elaborate diagram :
⁸https://retromat.org/en/?id=-19
About this book
15
To wrap it up, the plans in this book are a good fit for my context
and will also fit other situations. Use your own judgement. What
are the differences between your context and mine? Then adapt the
plans to fit your situation as needed.
16
About this book
Terminology and Icons
When I say “my retros” I mean “retrospectives that I facilitate”. It’s
just shorter.
When I say “action items” aka “AIs” I mean the experiments that
the team agrees to run as a result of the retrospective. The “action
items” aren’t always an action. They can also be changes to the
team rules. Actions should have a “due date”, rule changes a “review
by” date.
Formatting
Activities are formatted like this:
Title (#ID in Retromat)
Duration in min | Source
Icons
This is an info box, e.g. with adaptions during Corona
A globe indicates tips for making an activity work
remotely
Ha, we’re all set! Ready to look at my favourite activity of all time?
Let’s go!
Building Blocks
There is one activity that I use in virtually every retrospective
and other type of meeting I facilitate. Since it would be tedious
to describe it in every plan, let’s go over it here, once in detail:
Lean Coffee (#51)
At least 25 min - leancoffee.org
You find yourself in a meeting without an agenda? You want to
make sure that you use the time to talk about stuff that the majority
of people are interested in? And not about the topics dear to the
most vocal people?
Enter Lean Coffee. It’s like magic and gives your previously agendaless meeting a prioritized list of topics in minutes. Time you easily
gain by staying relevant and fewer people zoning out. I think of it
as a short, single-track Open Space⁹.
Lean Coffee works like this:
• Hand out sticky notes and pens
• Everybody writes down the topics they would like to talk
about. During a retrospective this part is usually in “Gather
Data” and there is a constraint or prompt for the topics.
• Go around the room and let everyone put up their stickies on
a board. Each person reads out their topics. Cluster stickies
that are about the same topic.
⁹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Space_Technology
18
Building Blocks
• People can now place 3 votes on the issues they would like to
discuss
• Order the stickies according to votes.
As per the original description on LeanCoffee.org¹⁰ you now start
discussing the first topic. But these last 10 years I’ve used a variant
with a time limit, without being aware that it’s not the original. (In
the original you also only get 2 votes, so we’ve cheated already.)
Here’s my “Let’s make sure two people cannot drone on forever”
twist:
• State how much time you set aside for Lean Coffee and
explain the rules: “We’ll start with the topic of highest interest.
We’ll set a timer for 10 minutes. When the timer beeps,
everyone gives a quick thumbs up or down. Majority of
thumbs up: The topic gets another 5 minutes. Majority of
thumbs down: Start the next topic with 10 minutes on the
clock.”
• For each topic: When discussion dies down, ask the team
members what they would like to try – take action or change
a team rule. Write down the suggested AIs.
• Stop when the allotted time is over.
Hidden inside Lean Coffee are two ways of voting:
Dotvoting
Many activities in Retromat use Dotvoting to choose between many
options. The official way is to cut sticky dots into sets of however
many votes you want people to cast. Frankly, I only do that for
paid workshops to appear superduper professional. For everyday
¹⁰https://leancoffee.org/
Building Blocks
19
purposes, my teams cast their votes with markers. So far, there’s
never been an issue with somebody trying to cheat.
I’d like people to write X’s with their markers because they are
visible. But participants always revert to vertical lines (“I”) and I
have given up. The lines are a little harder to spot but there are
always people quick to point out uncounted lines.
My default number of votes is 3. I’ve rarely had reason to pick a
different number. Still, feel free to experiment. If you give a higher
number of votes, you get to see the “long tail”, i.e. the hierarchy
among less popular topics. If you want to go lower, don’t go all the
way down to 1. You will lose valuable time with people who just
can’t choose between 2 options.
If you’re wondering, yes, dotvoting can lead to strategic voting.
In some teams there is someone who likes to go last so that they
can see everybody else’s vote before casting their own. So far, it
never seemed to be a problem as in vastly changing outcomes so
I’ve never tried to prevent it.
What I do pay attention to, is that the most influential people
vote last. The bigger the power imbalance, the more important
this becomes. I ensure this by talking to the person in question
beforehand. If I can’t manage that I’ll do it in the meeting with
a “Now everybody cast your votes. Cathrin, as the manager I’d
appreciate it if you would go last. (So as to not influence the
others.)”. The people in leadership positions that I’ve worked with
so far are aware of their influence. They vote last and speak up last
unprompted. But I wouldn’t count on that.
Gladiator Vote / Roman Vote
Gladiator Vote is a quick way to decide Yes or No for a specific
choice. In the case of Lean Coffee we decide whether to stay on the
current topic or to move onto the next one. It works like this:
20
Building Blocks
• Ask for a quick show of hands: Thumb up, thumb down or to
the side. Thumb to the side means “I’ll support whatever the
majority wants”. Everybody votes at the same time.
When a group is familiar with this method you can often prompt
it without saying anything just by raising your hand and rotating
your thumb. That’s convenient when a group is talking animatedly
and you don’t want to interrupt but still want to make sure that
most people want to continue this topic.
If there is a sea of sideways thumbs I interpret this as “Most people
aren’t interested and are too polite to say so” and move to the next
topic (after confirming with the participants).
Was that a decision?
This is a bonus “voting” method, since I try to detect action items
for each topic we cover. Is there an experiment they’d like to try?
Sometimes it feels like the team reached consensus but it’s not
explicit. Nobody seems opposed to the proposal, but does anyone
want it?
You don’t always need to vote. In these situations I ask “Was that
a decision?” This question often gets enough silent or mumbling
people to voice a “yes” to make it clear to everyone that a decision
has indeed been taken.
In immature teams people might not speak up if they object. Silence
is not necessarily consent. In mature teams it is a simple and
effective, technique.
These are methods I use all the time in retrospectives and will refer
to throughout the book. I’m not exaggerating when I say that Lean
Coffee changed my life *heartEyes*
General Purpose Plans
If a team is humming along nicely I rarely see a need to set a specific
topic. All we have to do is help them spot and address nuisances
early. The majority of my real-life retros are general purpose ones.
I let the team set the agenda. That’s why the plans in this chapter
work in a wide variety of situations.
Learning Matrix
This is my goto plan when I’m asked to facilitate a retrospective
on short notice. The Learning Matrix is also the go-to activity for
many of my colleagues at sipgate. And it’s perfect for beginners:
Retromat-ID: 122-9-51-39-45
Positive and True (#122)
5 min | Veronika Kotrba & Ralph Miarka, adapted from Nancy
Kline
We are starting with “Positive and True” to boost everyones energy.
Pick one question to go around in the group, e.g.:
• What have you done really well in the last iteration?
• What is something that makes you really happy?
• What were you most happy about yesterday?
You can also come up with a question of your own, as long as it
is tailored to get a response that is 1) positive, 2) true and 3) about
their own experiences.
General Purpose Plans
22
• Bad question: What surprised you in the last iteration? - A
surprise might also be something negative
• Better question: What were you proud of in the last iteration?
You start the activity off, by turning to your neighbor, addressing
them and asking the question you picked: “Alice, what was the best
thing that happened to you in this iteration?”
After answering, Alice passes on the question to her neighbor: “Bob,
what was the best thing that happened to you in this iteration?”
Then Bob asks his neighbor and so on until everyone answered and
asked. You will be the last to answer the question.
This activity sets an upbeat mood for the retro.
Learning Matrix (ID #9) plus Lean Coffee
(#51)
40 min | Agile Retrospectives / leancoffee.org
Learning Matrix is a great multi-purpose method that has “appreciation for others” built-in. I use it to gather topics and then use
Lean Coffee to structure and time box the conversations about these
topics.
Start with a flip chart with 4 quadrants labeled ‘:)’, ‘:(‘, ‘Idea!’, and
‘Appreciation’. Hand out sticky notes.
From here on out it’s Lean Coffee: The team members can add their
input to any quadrant. One thought per sticky note. Go around the
team and let everyone put up their stickies on the flipchart. The
person also describes their topic in 1 or 2 sentences. Dotvote, set
the timer, discuss, …
23
General Purpose Plans
Worked Well, Do Differently (ID #39)
15 min | Agile Retrospectives
As you and the team gain experience you will become better at
agreeing on what to do organically during Lean Coffee. When you
first start out, it would probably torpedo the timeboxed Lean Coffee
discussion to have decision making as part of the discussion. That’s
why we do it now as an extra step after Lean Coffee.
During Lean Coffee, collect suggestions on 2 flip charts, headed
‘Worked well’ and ‘Do differently next time’ respectively. State
clearly that these are only suggestions. The team will vote on these.
When the Lean Coffee time is up, ask if there are any more
suggestions for actions. If so, let the team write in silence for a few
minutes – 1 idea per index card. Let everyone read out their notes
and post them to the appropriate category. Lead a short discussion
on what the top 20% beneficial ideas are. Dotvote on which action
items to take, e.g. 3 votes per person. The top 2 or 3 become your
action items.
In my experience, a large number of AIs is not desirable. The fewer
AIs the team members pick, the better they can focus and actually
implement the AIs.
Pleased & Surprised (#45)
5 min | Unknown
Just make a quick round around the group and let each participant
point out one finding of the retrospective that either surprised or
pleased them (or both).
In most situations the above plan will result in a nice, effective
retrospective for you and your team. It’s easy to facilitate and wellsuited for beginners.
24
General Purpose Plans
Feelings
Feelings are first class citizens in agile environments. That might
my unfamiliar to more technocratic organizations. So, let’s talk
about the effect that events are having on us.
Retromat-ID: 82-7-51-38-60
Three Words (#82)
5-10 min | Yurii Liholat
Ask everyone to describe the last iteration with just 3 words. Give
them a minute to come up with something, then go around the
team. This helps people recall the last iteration so that they have
some ground to start from.
Mad Sad Glad (#7)
40 min | Agile Retrospectives
This is an absolute classic. Put up three posters labeled ‘mad’, ‘sad’,
and ‘glad’ (or use emojis). Hand out sticky notes. Team members
write down instances when they’ve felt that way – 1 instance per
sticky. When the time is up have everyone post their stickies to the
appropriate posters. Cluster the stickies on each poster.
Debrief by asking:
• What’s standing out? What’s unexpected?
• What was difficult about this task? What was fun?
• What patterns do you see? What do they mean for you as a
team?
25
General Purpose Plans
• Suggestions on how to continue?
If the suggestions don’t give a clear path forward, use Lean Coffee
to prioritize and discuss topics. Listen for suggestions of action
items.
Dot Voting - Keep, Drop, Add (#38)
10 min | Agile Retrospectives
Divide a flip chart into boxes headed with ‘Keep’, ‘Drop’ and ‘Add’.
Ask your participants to write concrete proposals for each category
- 1 idea per index card. Let them write in silence for a few minutes.
Let everyone read out their notes and post them to the appropriate
category. Lead a short discussion on what the top 20% beneficial
ideas are. Dotvote on it. The top 2 or 3 become your action items.
AHA! (#60)
5 min | Catherine Louis and Stefan Haas via Amber Haley
Throw a ball around the team and uncover positive thoughts and
learning experiences. Give out a question at the beginning that
people answer when they catch the ball, such as:
• One thing I learned in the last iteration
• One awesome thing someone else did for me
Depending on the question it might uncover events that are bugging people. If any alarm bells go off, dig a little deeper. With the
‘1 nice thing’-question you close on a positive note.
General Purpose Plans
26
In a remote retro, the ball can be emulated in different
ways:
• With a random wheel application that designates the following person (for example Wheeldecide¹¹)
• Asking the person to throw a ‘virtual’ ball, making the gesture
of throwing an imaginary ball and saying the name of the
chosen person.
• If you use a virtual board (for example in Miro¹², Mural¹³ or
any similar tool), you can use avatars for the participants and
a ball image to be moved between avatars.
¹¹https://wheeldecide.com/
¹²https://miro.com/
¹³https://www.mural.co/
27
General Purpose Plans
I like, I wish
Here’s a very short and sweet plan.
Retromat-ID: 107-126-51-126
Unlikely Superheros (#107)
10 min | Pietari Kettunen
Each participant creates a superhero version of themselves based
on how they see themselves in the team / project - Complete
with appropriate superpowers, weaknesses and possibly an archnemesis. Give the team 5 minutes to write down their Alter Ego
and then go around the circle to present.
I like, I wish (#126) plus Lean Coffee (#51)
40 min | Inspired by Satu Rekonen
I love this activity because it allows participants to voice negative
feedback positively as a wish. That makes it both easier to voice the
critique and easier to receive it as someone criticized.
Hang up two flip charts, one headed ‘I like’ and the other ‘I wish’¹⁴.
Give the participants 5-10 minutes to silently write down what
they liked about the past iteration and the team and what they
wish was different (and how it should be different) – one point per
sticky note. When everyone is finished, go around the circle and
everybody reads out their ‘I like’ items and hangs them up. Repeat
the same for the ‘I wish’ stickies. Cluster similar topics.
¹⁴I’ve recently seen the addition of an “I wonder”-column. Worked really well, when I tried
it.
General Purpose Plans
28
Now use Lean Coffee to talk about the team’s most important
topics.
After each topic ask the team for an action item or rule change.
Write it down in a table with columns “What”, “Why”, “Who” and
“Until”.
I like, I wish reloaded (#126)
10 min | Inspired by Satu Rekonen
Same as before, this time regarding the retrospective. Have another
flipchart ready with columns ‘I like’ and ‘I wish’. Give the participants 5 minutes to silently write down what they liked about this
retrospective and wish had been different (and how) – one point
per sticky note. When everyone is finished, go around the circle
and everybody reads out their ‘I like’ and ‘I wish’ stickies.
General Purpose Plans
29
For many people
Every once in a while, there’s an opportunity to involve more
people in a retrospective. Could be a second team that you’re
working with closely; managers that don’t usually see each other;
stakeholders and customers; people up the hierarchy; representatives from other teams and departments; … You name it.
This plan works for up to 25 people. Maybe 30. For anything bigger,
look into World Cafe¹⁵, OpenSpace¹⁶, or Liberating Structures¹⁷.
Once you facilitate for more than 12-15 people, things get a lot
harder. And everything takes much longer:
• Lots of clarification is needed. There will always be someone
who didn’t catch it the first time. Or the second time.
• If you want everyone to be heard, well, there are now lots
more people to speak.
That’s why it’s a good idea to double down on writing stuff out and
visualizing. Do have an agenda hanging prominently. If the group
contains people unfamiliar with agile, consider covering the Vegas
Rule and Prime Directive and the goals of retrospectives before
going over the agenda.
As this plan will take longer than the other plans in here, add
breaks. At least one break of 10 minutes every 90 minutes. That’s
the minimum. Be aware that after breaks people often don’t return
on time. That’s why I usually say “10 minutes” and will wait 15 for
the stragglers. That’s not nice for the people who are actually back
on time. So far I haven’t found a better solution.
The key to meetings with many people is to divide and conquer
… erm, facilitate. Frequently break up the big group into smaller
groups. And – leading up to the big event – get yourself some help!
¹⁵http://www.theworldcafe.com/
¹⁶https://openspaceworld.org/wp2/what-is/
¹⁷http://www.liberatingstructures.com/
General Purpose Plans
30
A week or two in advance, ask fellow facilitators to co-facilitate
with you. Find at least one other person. If you can’t recruit
another trained facilitator, ask for volunteers to help you to explain
instructions to smaller groups. You can recruit them from the pool
of participants because they are meant to help whichever smaller
group they are ending up in. They don’t have to be go around the
room and help different groups like you will.
To be clear: You ask for volunteers well in advance of the mega
retro. Not at the actual event. If you’ve got participants around that
know your plan for the day that will help a lot. They can explain
activities and hand out material, giving you room to take care of
trickier questions. Or of a smaller group that ended up without any
of the volunteer explainers in them.
If you’ve found a proper co-facilitator you can plan the event
together. For helpers from among the participants, have a planning
meeting the day before the event. Go through times, activities, goals
of the activities, materials, …
For a big event like this: Prepare, prepare, prepare. There will be a
lot of eyes on you and you don’t want to waste people’s time with
stuff you could have done beforehand.
Coming up with this plan was a little tricky because in my experience big events like this have a specific topic set in advance. And
you should pick activities tailored to deal with this topic. Since there
are a million possible topics (too many for me to pick one with
any confidence), I opted for a general purpose activity for “Gather
Data”.
When you plan your retro for many people and know your topic,
adapt the plan below for your purposes. Replace #tweetmysprint
with something targeted. Whatever you come up with, try to make
it simple. Complicated instructions are more difficult to clarify in
big groups than in small groups.
The following plan takes 2 hours and 15 minutes including a break.
Add at least another 15 minutes as a buffer in your calendar invite.
General Purpose Plans
31
(For something longer than 3 hours you have to look into food and
drinks.)
Participants will be standing or moving most of the time. Provide
tables and chairs along the walls of the room for when the groups
create a poster. Also sprinkle a few chairs in convenient spots for
people whose legs grow tired.
For a remote setting, you have to have think carefully
through what tools you’ll need and whether they scale
for such a large group (break out rooms, etc.) . You
need to be familiar with the tool. Practise several
times with volunteers.
Retromat-ID: 52-97-91-61-53
Constellation - Opening (#52)
15 min | Lyssa Adkins via Luis Goncalves
Place a circle or an object in the middle of a free space. Let the
participants gather around it. Explain that the circle/object is the
center of approval: If they agree with a statement they should move
towards it. If they don’t, they should move as far outwards as their
degree of disagreement. Now read out statements, e.g.
•
•
•
•
I feel I can talk openly in this retrospective
I am looking forward to the next hours
I am satisfied with the last quarter
I am happy with the quality of our product
Wait a little after each question so that everybody can watch
the constellations unfold. Debrief with questions¹⁸ about people’s
observations, such as
¹⁸http://thedebriefingcube.com/
General Purpose Plans
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
32
What did you notice?
Which constellations were surprising?
What question should I have asked but didn’t?
What did you like or dislike about this experience?
When did you care the most about the result of a question?
What else would you like to share?
What did you learn about yourself and the group?
What are you more aware of now?
Only ask questions related to Psychological Safety¹⁹ like “I can
talk openly in this retrospective” if you are prepared to deal with
“negative” answers. If there is a large number of people moving
away from the center, indicating that they will not talk openly –
what will you do? You cannot ask questions like this and ignore an
uncomfortable answer.
You can recreate this activity digitally with a tool like
Miro²⁰ that shows the cursor of all participants, or
with avatars of the participants to be placed by each
one.
Other tools such as Mentimeter²¹, Poll Everywhere²²
or Kahoot!²³ allow you to collect and display answers
in real time, and can be used for this activity, for
example with a question such as: “How much do you
agree with this statement, from 1 (strongly disagree)
to 10 (strongly agree)?
¹⁹https://wall-skills.com/2020/what-is-psychological-safety/
²⁰https://miro.com/
²¹https://www.mentimeter.com/
²²https://www.polleverywhere.com/
²³https://kahoot.com/
33
General Purpose Plans
#tweetmysprint (#97)
30 min | Thomas Guest
Ask participants to write up 2 or 3 tweets on sticky notes about the
iteration they’ve just completed. Tweets could be on the iteration as
a whole, on individual stories, a rant, or shameless self-promotion
- as long as they are brief. Hash tags, emoticons, attached pictures,
@usernames are all welcome. Allow 7 minutes to write the tweets,
then arrange them in a timeline and discuss themes, trends etc. Now
give participants 5 minutes to favorite, retweet and write replies to
the tweets.
Ask, what topics emerge that they would like to talk about during
this retrospective. Write the topics down.
Poster Session (#91)
35 min | Adapted by Corinna Baldauf, inspired by Michal
Grzeskowiak
Explain that groups of 2-4 will work on the topics. Each participant
can only work on one topic.
Go through the list of topics and read out the first one. Ask who
would like to work on this topic.
• If you’ve got 0-1, interest is not big enough. Drop this topic.
• If 2-4 raise their hands, yay!
• If it’s more, create several groups of 2-4 for this topic. Move
to the next topic.
After you’ve gone through the list, each group prepares a poster
(flip chart) to present to the other groups. Give the teams guidelines
about what the posters should cover / answer, such as:
34
General Purpose Plans
•
•
•
•
•
•
What exactly happens? Why is that a problem?
Why / when / how does this situation happen?
Who benefits from the current situation? What is the benefit?
Possible solutions (with Pros and Cons)
Who could help change the situation?
… whatever is appropriate in your setting …
Provide the guidelines on a flipchart so that the participants can
refer back to them.
The groups have 15-20 minutes to discuss and create their posters.
Afterwards gather and each group gets 2 minutes to present their
results.
10 Minute Break
It says “10 minute break” but it’ll be 15 unless you have the most
disciplined of groups.
Chaos Cocktail Party (#61)
25 min | Suzanne Garcia, Dr. Sivasailam “Thiagi” Thiagaraja
Everyone writes one card with an action that they think is important to take - the more specific the better. Provide printouts of the
(SMART criteria)²⁴ to raise the quality of actions.
Announce that writing clearly is important. People other than
themselves will have to be able to read them.
Now participants start moving about in the room. Whenever they
meet, they exchange their cards. In this way, nobody has a stake in
making their card win.
²⁴https://wall-skills.com/2018/smart-criteria/
General Purpose Plans
35
After half a minute, tell them to pair up and chat about their cards
like in a cocktail party. Every chat pair discusses the actions on
their two cards. Stop the chatting after 2 minutes. Each chat pair
splits 5 points between the two cards. More points go to the more
important action. Pairs split up again, walk through the room and
switch their card with someone else at least once, before pairing up
again.
Organize 3 to 5 rounds of chats (depending on group size). In the
end everybody adds up the points on their card. Start looking for the
top ranked card by calling out “Does anybody have a card with (5 x
NumberOfChats) points on it?”. It’s unlikely that any one card got
the full 5 points every time. Lower the number like in an inverted
auction until you find the card with the most points.
Ask: Who can implement this action? Is anybody opposed to
it? What would have to change to make it acceptable? What’s
the next step in implementing this? How will we know that it’s
implemented? Who will make sure that we implement this action?
If the group agrees to have enough capacity for more actions, look
for the second ranked card and (after the questions) possibly third
ranked.
Constellation - Closing (#53)
15 min | Lyssa Adkins via Luis Goncalves, Christoph Pater
Gather again in the free space around the circle. Repeat that the
object or center of the circle is the center of approval: If they agree
to a statement they move towards it, if they don’t, they move as far
outwards as their degree of disagreement. Now read out statements,
e.g.
• We talked about what was most important to me
• I spoke openly today
General Purpose Plans
36
• I think the time of this retrospective was well invested
• I am confident we will carry out our action items
Watch the constellations unfold. Ask questions about people’s
observations, such as which constellations were surprising.
If you regularly facilitate for larger groups, look into Liberating
Structures²⁵. They are a treasure trove of methods for any meeting
or workshop and especially shine for large groups.
²⁵http://www.liberatingstructures.com/
Newly-formed Teams
Whenever a new team is forming, a liftoff²⁶ event (aka kickoff) is in
order. Create a time and space for the team to get familiar with each
other. It will make working together so much smoother. A proper
liftoff sets a team up for success by laying a solid foundation of
agreements and shared understanding. Then the team doesn’t have
to spend their retrospectives patching up problems that could have
been avoided.
If for some reason you can’t have a liftoff, be prepared to spend
several retrospectives on laying the foundation. Here’s one idea for
a liftoff-y retrospective. Of course, you can also pick ideas from it
if you do get to do a proper liftoff (yay!).
Expectations
Retromat-ID: 129-62-56-12-134
String Theory (#129)
15 min | Eben Halford
String Theory speeds up team building by sharing traits and interests between 6-15 team members. They can build closer bonds than
possible with just work-related stuff.
Have the team form a circle with everyone looking inwards. Leave
about a foot of space between people.
²⁶https://pragprog.com/book/liftoff/liftoff-second-edition
Newly-formed Teams
38
Hand a ball of yarn to a random player and tell them to hold on
tight to the end of the yarn with their non-dominant hand and
the ball in the dominant one. The yarn holder starts the game by
saying something about themselves that is not work-related such as
‘I have a daughter’ or ‘I play the guitar’. If this statement is true for
any other team member they raise their hand and say ‘Yes, that’s
me’. The yarn holder passes the ball to the person who raised their
hand. If there’s more than one, the yarn holder can choose one. If
no one shares the statement the yarn holder has to make another
statement.
The person who received the ball of yarn holds on to the thread and
tautens it. This is the first connection in a network of shared traits.
The new yarn holder now makes a statement about themselves,
passes the ball while holding on to their part of the yarn and so
on.
The game ends when time is up OR everybody has at least two
connections OR the yarn runs out.
If Corona is still an issue, leave at least 6 feet of space
between players. Pick a dense yarn. It needs to be
heavy enough to be thrown across these distances.
You can debrief with some of these questions:
•
•
•
•
•
What did you notice?
How do you feel about few (or no) connections?
What is it like to see this web of connections?
Can you be a team without this web?
What would happen if someone let go of their threads? How
would it affect the team?
• Is there anything you will do differently at work now?
39
Newly-formed Teams
Are you remote? Replace this Activity with “Show
and Tell²⁷” (not in Retromat, yet):
Each team member gets 1 minute to show and talk
about something they own. This could be anything,
their pet rock, their favourite plant or their collection
of fine spices.
After each turn, allow some time for a conversation
from the rest of the team. Make sure to set a time limit.
By sharing these intimate possessions, the team members get a better idea of what is important to the
others.
Expectations (#62)
15 min | Valerie Santillo
Give each team member a piece of paper. The lower half is blank.
The top half is divided into two sections:
• What my team mates can expect from me
• What I expect from my team mates
Each writes down their name and fills out the top half for themselves. When everyone is finished, they pass their paper to the left
and start reviewing the sheet that was given to them. In the lower
half they write what they personally expect from that person, sign
it and pass it on.
When the papers made it around the room, take some time to review
and share observations.
²⁷https://biz30.timedoctor.com/virtual-team-building/
40
Newly-formed Teams
Invite a Customer (#56)
30 min | Nick Oostvogels
Invite a customer or internal stakeholder to your retrospective. Let
the team ask ALL the questions:
•
•
•
•
How does the client use your product?
What makes them curse the most?
Which function makes their life easier?
What can customers do with what your team is supposed to
build? How will it make their lives better?
• Let the client demonstrate their typical workflow
• …
Dot Voting - Start, Stop, Continue (#12)
10 min | Agile Retrospectives
Divide a flip chart into boxes headed with ‘Start’, ‘Continue’ and
‘Stop’. Ask your participants to write concrete proposals for each
category - 1 idea per index card. Let them write in silence for a
few min. Let everyone read out their notes and post them to the
appropriate category. Lead a short discussion on what the top 20%
beneficial ideas are. Dotvote on it. The top 2 or 3 become your action
items.
Know Your Meme (#134)
10 min - Thorben Heins
Newly-formed Teams
41
Usually devices are frowned upon during a retrospective. In this
activity the participants get to whip out their laptop or smart
phone in order to find the meme or gif that best represents the
retrospective. Give participants 3 minutes to find the meme and
then go around the circle. Each participant shows their meme and
briefly says why they chose it. End the retrospective on a humorous
note.
42
Newly-formed Teams
Laundry Day
Retromat-ID: 140-98-51-24-40
What kind of X? (#140)
5 min | Unknown via Corinna Baldauf
Start by asking “If this iteration were an X, what kind of X would it
be?” This question has endless variations from “If the iteration were
a animal, what animal would it be?” over cocktails and furniture to
plants and “If the iteration were a car, what car would it be?”
Ask everybody to write down their answer on a sticky note. Go
around the team, everybody reads out their note and posts it on a
board. Briefly discuss the answers. After all it’s significant if the
iteration were “a BMW, but the brakes don’t work” or a “red 2004
Toyota Prius”. What does it mean to the person who wrote it down?
Laundry Day (#98) plus Lean Coffee (#51)
40 min | Katrin Dreyer
Use this activity if you suspect the team to take lots of unconscious
decisions hardly ever questioning anything. You can figure out
what things need to be talked about to get an explicit grasp of them.
You need:
•
•
•
•
about 3 metres of string as the clothesline
about 20 clothes pins
a white shirt (cut from paper)
a pair of dirty pants (cut from paper)
43
Newly-formed Teams
Hang up the clothesline and mark the middle, e.g. with a ribbon.
Hang up the clean shirt on one side and the dirty pants on the other.
Ask the team to write items onto index cards for each of the two
categories: ‘Clean - Clear and well understood’ and ‘Dirty - Unclear
and confusing’. Hang up the notes with clothes pins and re-arrange
them into clusters. Now the team picks 2 ‘dirty’ and 2 ‘clean’ topics
they want to talk about, e.g. by dotvoting. Discuss these 4 topics
with Lean Coffee.
Alternative for remote retros: Show a picture of a
clothesline and a pile of dirty laundry respectively.
Open Items List (#24)
15 min | Corinna Baldauf
Prepare a flip chart with 3 columns titled ‘What’, ‘Who’, and ‘Due’.
Ask all participants to think about what they want to do to advance
the team. After 3 minutes, go around the team and ask for their task.
Write it down, 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.
Plus & Delta (#40)
10 min | 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
Newly-formed Teams
44
to clarify the exact meaning and detect the majority’s preference
when notes from different people point into opposite directions.
New to Agile
When teams start working in an agile way, they often run into
similar challenges. Let’s address some of them in the following
plans.
Agile Principles
If the team is new to working in an agile way, it’s time to cover
some ground rules and agile basics. This retro does a lot of driveby teaching, covering many of the basics.
Retromat-ID: 46-123-63-13-16
Vegas Rule & Prime Directive
Go over confidentiality aka the Vegas rule²⁸ and no-blame-game
aka the Prime Directive of Retrospectives²⁹ from the beginning of
the book. After laying out the ground rules, let’s dive in.
Why Retrospectives? (#46)
10 min | Pete Roessler
Start into the retrospective by asking ‘Why do we do this? What is
the purpose of retrospectives?’ Write down all answers for everyone
²⁸“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”
²⁹“Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the
best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources
available, and the situation at hand.”
46
New to Agile
to see. If you know more than the others and have a teaching
function, bring your own purpose.
If you’re curious, I share my goals, i.e. what I think
the purpose of retros is in the introduction.
Find your Focus Principle (#123)
30 min | Tobias Baier
Many people know (about) the Agile Manifesto³⁰. Fewer people
know about the Agile Principles although they are IMHO more
concrete and actionable. Let’s make sure that your team knows
them.
³⁰https://agilemanifesto.org/
New to Agile
47
Print the principles of the Agile Manifesto³¹ onto cards, one principle per card. If the group is large, split it and provide each smaller
group with their own set of the principles.
³¹https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
48
New to Agile
Explain that you want to order the principles according to the
following question: ‘How much do we need to improve regarding
this principle?’ In the end the principle that is the team’s weakest
spot should be on top of the list.
Start with a random principle, discuss what it means and how much
need for improvement you see, then place it in the middle. Pick
the next principle, discuss what it means and sort it relatively to
the other principles. You can propose a position depending on the
previous discussion and move from there by comparison. Repeat
this until all cards are sorted.
Now consider the card on top: This is presumeably the most needed
and most urgent principle you should work on. How does the team
feel about it? Does everyone still agree? What are the reasons there
is the biggest demand for change here? Should you compare to the
second or third most important issue again? If someone would now
rather choose the second position, why?
Low Hanging Fruit (#63)
10 min | 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 to improve on the chosen principle - one idea per card.
When everyone is 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.
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New to Agile
The straightforward choice is to pick the fruit in the bottom left as
action items. If this is not consensus, you can either have a short
discussion and dot vote.
SMART Goals (#13)
5-10 min | Agile Retrospectives
Great, the team picked an action item. How actionable is this action
item? Introduce SMART goals³² (specific, measurable, attainable,
relevant, timely) and examples for SMART vs not so smart goals.
Example: ‘We will study stories before pulling them by talking
about them with the product owner each Wednesday at 9am’ vs.
‘We’ll get to know the stories before they are in our sprint backlog’.
³²https://wall-skills.com/2018/smart-criteria/
New to Agile
50
Check if the current action item is SMART. If it’s vague, make
it SMARTer. If you have more than one AI, break into groups to
work on them in parallel. Let each group present their results. All
participants should agree on the ‘SMART-ness’ of the goals. Refine
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New to Agile
and confirm. The team is much more likely to implement a SMART
goal.
Helped, Hindered, Hypothesis (#16)
5 min | 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.
52
New to Agile
Story Time
It can take time for the Product Owner and dev team to work
together smoothly in a previously siloed organization. Mismatched
expectations surface as fights about user stories³³, acceptance criteria and what ‘done’ means.
Make sure you’ve got your team’s Definition of Ready³⁴ and
Definition of Done³⁵ at hand. They are likely to change as a result
of this retro.
Retromat-ID: 3-54-99-14
Check In - Quick Question (#3)
5 min | Agile Retrospectives
Pose a question and give everyone a minute to ponder it. Sample
questions:
• In one word - What do you need from this retrospective?
• What surprised you last iteration?
• If you could change one thing about the last iteration what
would it be?
Each participant answers the question (unless they say ‘I pass’).
Avoid evaluating comments such as ‘Great’. ‘Thanks’ is okay.
³³Or whatever format you use to capture tasks for the team to work on. Many people think
that Scrum mandates the user story format. It doesn’t. Honeybadger Scrum don’t care how you
write down a ‘Product Backlog item’ [sic].
³⁴https://wall-skills.com/2017/definition-of-ready/
³⁵https://wall-skills.com/2017/definition-of-done-in-scrum/
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New to Agile
Story Oscars (#54)
40 min | Marin Todorov
Print out all stories handled during the iteration and bring them
along to the retrospective. Display them on a board. Create 3 award
categories (i.e. boxes on the board):
• Best story
• Most annoying story
• A 3rd category invented by the team
Ask the team to nominate stories by putting them in one of the
award boxes.
For each category: Dot-vote and announce the winner. Ask the team
why they think the user story won in this category and let the team
reflect on the process of completing the tasks - what went well or
not that well. Then move to the next category.
During this activity capture everything team members suggest as
action items – either to repeat successes or improve disappointments.
Planning Poker Voting (#99)
10 min | Andreas Ratsch
If you’ve got very influential and / or shy team members, re-use
Planning Poker cards³⁶ to vote simultaneously.
Display all suggested actions. Hand out an ordered deck of Planning
Poker cards to each participant. Count the proposals and take that
³⁶Don’t have Planning Poker cards? Count the number of action item candidates and let
participants write cards for themselves.
New to Agile
54
many cards from the decks. If you’ve got 5 suggestions you might
have cards ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’, ‘5’, and ‘8’. If you’ve got 7 candidates, stop
before 20. This depends on your deck (some have a ‘1/2’ card).
It doesn’t matter, as long as all participants have the same set of
values.
Explain the rules:
• Choose a card for each suggestion.
• Choose a low value if the action is not worth doing in your
opinion.
• Choose a high value if the action is worth starting next
iteration.
Give them a minute to sort out their internal ranking and then
present the first suggested action. Everybody chooses a card and
they reveal them at the same time. Add the numbers from all
cards and write the sum onto the action. Remove the used poker
cards. Repeat this for all actions. If you have more actions than
poker values the players can show ‘no card’ (counting 0) for the
appropriate number of times.
Implement the action with the highest sum in the next iteration.
Add more actions only if there’s team consensus to do so.
55
New to Agile
In a remote setting, you can play Planning Poker in
different ways, such as:
• In a chat: Everybody types in their number
without hitting “Send”. They all press “Send” at
the same time, when you say so.
• Using a Planning Poker application, such as
Pointing Poker³⁷
• With the voting functionality on post-its representing the different cards of the deck in virtual
boards like Miro³⁸ or Mural³⁹
Feedback Door - Numbers (ROTI) (#14)
5 min | ALE 2011, Corinna Baldauf
Put sticky notes on the door with the numbers 1 through 5 on them.
5 is the topmost and best, 1 the lowest and worst⁴⁰. When ending the
retrospective, ask your participants to put a sticky to the number
they feel reflects the session. The sticky can be empty or have a
comment or suggestion on it.
³⁷https://www.pointingpoker.com/
³⁸https://miro.com/
³⁹https://www.mural.co/
⁴⁰Heads up: Originally, 1 is the best and 5 the worst. I reversed it for this plan because
the highest value is the best in the voting activity and I hope it’s less confusing if we keep it
consistent.
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New to Agile
Support Ticket Overload
In this plan my implicit assumption that “introducing agile” =
“starting Scrum” becomes rather explicit. I’m aware that there are
other agile approaches out there. But Scrum is most widely used
and the one that I am most familiar with. The following problem
appears in many Scrum adoptions:
Most teams or individual people in them have to support existing
products and infrastructure to some extent. When adopting Scrum
the sprint is meant to give them focus. There’s the reasonable
expectation to work on tasks in the Sprint Backlog.
But that doesn’t make incidents go away. Support tickets keep
arriving. Sometimes with angry or desperate people in tow. PreScrum the time for support tasks was often hidden in inefficencies
in the organization. Using Scrum, it becomes painfully obvious how
much time these support tasks really leech.
A frustrating situation for everyone involved: The people giving
support and feeling guilty about letting the team down. The people
waiting for new development because everything takes forever. The
people waiting to have their problems fixed. All around bad vibes
:(
In this retro the team explores options to get out of ticket overload.
Retromat-ID: 108-64-51-77
Know your neighbour - Opening (#108)
10 min | Fabián Lewkowicz
Ask each team member to briefly describe how their right neighbour felt during the iteration. Their neighbour confirms or corrects
the guess.
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New to Agile
Once all participants shared their best guess about how their
teammates felt, you get an idea of how connected they are, how
communication is flowing in your team and if people are aware of
the feelings expressed, in some way, by others.
Quartering - Identify boring stories Tackle
tickets (#64) plus Lean Coffee (#51)
50 min | Wayne D. Grant
Bring printouts of all support tickets of the last 2 iterations. You’ll
try to find ways to make tickets less frustrating and time consuming.
That will likely take different solutions for different types of tickets.
Some you can get rid of for good, e.g. by
• finding out that it doesn’t need doing it all,
• fixing a (usability) bug so the associated tickets don’t pop up
any more, or
• training someone else to handle this type of ticket.
For others you might agree to handle them differently so that they
are less disruptive to the team’s flow.
Draw a big square and divide it into 2 columns. Label them ‘Rare’
and ‘Frequent’. Let the team sort all tickets into the appropriate
column. Cluster tickets that are about the same type of problem.
Then ask them to add a rough estimate of how long it took on each
of the tickets.
Now add a horizontal line so that your square has 4 quadrants⁴¹.
Label the top row ‘Short’ (took minutes) and the bottom row ‘Long’
(took hours). Rearrange the tickets in each column. The frequent
and time-consuming stories are now nicely grouped.
Ask for observations such as:
⁴¹Splitting the assessment into several steps, improves focus. You can adapt Quartering to
lots of other 2-dimensional categorizations.
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New to Agile
• What do you realize now that you didn’t know before?
• What do you notice?
Ask the team to dotvote on which type of ticket they think is most
beneficial to tackle. Use Lean Coffee to talk about the top-voted
tickets.
For each type of ticket discuss how to reduce or abolish it. Write
down the experiments the team agrees on. Remind them, that they
don’t need a perfect solution, just something that works better for
them than what they are doing right now.
Follow Through (#77)
10 min | Judith Andresen
Let everyone draw an emoticon of their current mood on a sticky
note. Then draw a scale on a flip chart, labeled ‘Probability we’ll
implement our action items’. Mark ‘0%’ on the left and ‘100%’ on
the right. Ask everyone to place their sticky according to their
confidence in their follow through as a team.
Discuss interesting results such as low probability or bad mood.
Houston, we have a
problem
We are now entering rocky ground. Everything is not going great.
There are problems, some minor, some major. Here are plans geared
to help the team overcome specific challenges.
Bad vibes? Appreciation!
The team is down on its luck. They have trouble delivering and
they know it. Instead of giving the team a stern talking to this plan
focuses on what is working. Appreciate these things and then build
and improve on them.
Being appreciative and solution-oriented is a great idea in general.
Then why is this plan in this chapter and not elsewhere? Because
I’ve found that it can be a gamechanger for depressed teams that
have gotten defensive. Everybody is breathing down their neck but
they project that a) things are fine or b) it’s someone else’s fault.
Now how does that fit with an approach that is focused on finding
good about the team? Isn’t that likely to reinforce problematic
behavior? It might. But the opposite is also possible: A few rounds
of pampering and patting each other on the back builds some teams
up enough to enable them to own their mistakes. Then they can look
for ways to improve. When there’s no need to defend against a tide
of reprimands they are free to stand up and look around.
Rare exception: Teams that are very selfcongratulatory, may be lacking self-awareness
to see how they fall short of others expectations.
Houston, we have a problem
60
Enough preamble, let’s run through the appreciative approach:
Retromat-ID: 76-65-37-112
Round of Admiration (#76)
5 min | Judith Andresen
Give everybody 2 minutes to think about what they admire most
in their left neighbor. When the time is up start the round of
admiration by facing your left neighbour and stating ‘What I
admire most about you is …’. Then your neighbour says what she
admires about her neighbour and so on until the last participants
admires you. Feels great, doesn’t it?
Appreciative Inquiry (#65)
30 min | Doug Bradbury, adapted for SWD by Corinna Baldauf
We continue the way we started, with positive questions and roundbased. Hand out pens and paper and explain the activity: “Today
we’ll look at all the things that are working well, so that we can
build on that. I’ve brought a couple of questions. We’ll go through
them in rounds. In each round I’ll ask a question. You will write
down your answers, so that everyone has enough time to think.
When everyone is done, we’ll go around the room and you read
out your to the others. Then I’ll ask the next question.”
Pick a different person as the first to answer. The order can stay the
same, but you don’t want the same person to always be the first.
Move that spotlight around :)
Here are the questions:
• When was the last time you were really engaged / animated /
productive? What did you do? What had happened? How did
it feel?
Houston, we have a problem
61
• From an application-/code-perspective: What is the awesomest
stuff you’ve built together? What makes it great?
• Of the things you built for this company, which has the most
value? Why?
• When did you work best with the Product Owner? What was
good about it?
• When was your collaboration best?
• What was your most valuable contribution to the developer
community (of this organization)? How did you do it?
• Leave your modesty at the door: What is the most valuable
skill / character trait you contribute to the team? Examples?
• What is your team’s most important trait? What sets you
apart?
The questions are meant for Scrum teams that build software. You
might need to adapt them to fit your team. Remember to focus on
the positive.
Now that the team has basked in all that is going well, it is time to
look for improvements.
Remember the Future (#37)
25 min | Luke Hohmann via Diana Larsen
Set the scene for “Remember the Future”: “We have now looked
at all the things that are going well. But wait, it’s getting better:
Imagine you could time travel to the end of the next iteration (or
release). And it went swimmingly. Absolutely perfect! You learn
that it was the best, most productive iteration yet! What was it like?”
Let the participants think about it and take notes on sticky notes.
It’s crucial to get the participants to imagine the better future in
great detail. Support that by prompting:
Houston, we have a problem
•
•
•
•
•
62
What do you see?
What do you hear?
How do you feel?
What is different?
What else?
Go around the group again and let everyone describe their vision
of a perfect iteration. The better they can envision this perfect
situation the better ideas they’ll have in the next part:
Follow up with ‘What changes did we implement that resulted in
such a productive and satisfying future?”
Write down the suggestions where people can see them. When
discussion dies down, pick the top 1 or 2 actions via dotvoting.
This freestyle decide what to do, needs experience.
Not for beginners.
Appreciation Postcards (#112)
10 min | Philip Rogers
Close the retrospective by handing out empty postcards. Ask everybody to write a postcard to their right neighbor, thanking them
for something they did. This way we can be sure that everybody
receives at least 1 postcard. On top of that they can write as many
additional postcards as they would like. They can address them
either to individuals or to multiple people.
Collect all postcards. Consider using envelopes with the names on
for privacy. Deliver the cards throughout the next iteration to make
someone’s day.
Houston, we have a problem
For remote retros, go with either ecards or emails.
63
Houston, we have a problem
64
Complaining – not taking
responsibility
Sometimes teams, especially teams new to agile, are “content” to
complain. They keep blaming external parties and never come up
with any action items. And why would they if it’s all somebody
else’s fault anyway. Their logic is unassailable…
Blaming others is a convenient way to avoid taking responsibility
and changing oneself. So how do you get a team out of this attitude?
The following plan helps teams realize that nothing will change
until they start behaving differently.
The key word during the whole retrospective is “you”. As in “What
are you going to do about it?”. And then I throw in a change of
perspective for good measure. This can help the team to empathize
with their scapegoat and see things in a new light. See for yourself:
Retromat-ID: 114-4-58-29-102
Give me a face (#114)
5 min | Afagh Zadeh
We’ll start by not taking ourselves too seriously: Each team member
gets a sharpie and a tangerine with a sticky note asking: ‘How do
you feel? Please give me a face’. After all are done drawing, you go
around and compare the works of art and emotions.
Are you remote? Ask people to pick and paste a fitting
emoji⁴².
⁴²https://emojipedia.org/
65
Houston, we have a problem
Timeline (#4)
25 min | Agile Retrospectives
Break up into groups with 5 or less people each. Distribute cards
and markers. Give participants 10 minutes to note down memorable
and / or personally significant events from the iteration. It’s about
gathering many perspectives. Consensus would be harmful. All
participants post their cards and order them chronologically. It’s
okay to add cards on the fly. Analyze. What do participants notice?
Are there patterns?
Color Coding can help to make patterns visible, e.g.:
• Emotions
• Events (technical, organization, people, …)
• Role (tester, developer, manager, …)
Undercover Boss (#58)
10 min | Love Agile
Look at the timeline again from a different angle: Imagine your
boss had spent the last iteration - unrecognized - among you. What
would she think about your interactions and results? What would
she want you to change? Write your answers on sticky notes and
post them on a board.
If the team has a favorite scapegoat it can do wonders
if said scapegoat attends the retrospective and shares
their view and reasoning. Can you invite them? Disclamer: This is tricky and requires experience. It’s not
a good idea for beginners.
66
Houston, we have a problem
Circle of Influence (#29)
15 min | Diana Larsen
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
• ‘Wider system - Response action’
from innermost to outermost circle respectively.
Take your answers from last phase and put them in the appropriate
circle. Add any other suggestions for action items. Are they all in
the inner circle that is completely in the team’s control?
Walk through the “outer actions” and encourage the team to revise
the action so that they become something the team can do. Agree
on which actions to try, e.g. via dotvoting.
If the team keeps acting helpless I try an intervention
along the lines of “We can’t change other people. We
can only change our own perspective and behavior.
If we always behave the same way, the outcome will
also stay the same.”
You and Me (#102)
10 min | Mike B.
We’ll end with with an activity that is uplifting and stressing
personal responsibility:
Houston, we have a problem
67
Put up 2 columns on a white board: ‘Thank you!’ and ‘My action’.
Ask everybody to write one sticky per column: Something they
want to thank another teammate for doing; and something they
want to change about their own behavior in the next iteration. It can
be something really small. Once everyone is finished, do a round
for each person to present their stickies and post them to the board.
Houston, we have a problem
68
Reluctant Participants
When I first heard about retrospectives, I was smitten. It was love at
first sight. I distinctly remember thinking: “This is a fantastic idea!
I will take this practice everywhere I go!” Even though there was
no way I could have predicted how defining retrospectives would
become for my life.
Alas, not everybody is like that. Among the top questions I get is
something along the lines of:
“One member of my team doesn’t like to participate in our ceremonies. She doesn’t really talk during any of the ceremonies, just
tells our manager that she thinks they are a waste of time. I’ve tried
everything! I just can’t get her to engage! Any help on this?”
This is an incredibly common problem. And people usually try to
fix it by making the retro “more fun”. In most scenarios that is
exactly the wrong way to go! Fun is not the point of retrospectives.
The point is to enable change. If retros don’t improve people’s lives
over the course of a few iterations then they truly are a waste of
time. We don’t do them just so that we have done them.
Make it worth their time
The reluctant person gave a reason for her disengagement. And
it’s a valid reason. Veronika Kotrba and Ralph Miarka⁴³ taught me:
“Everybody is the expert for their own situation”. If she thinks it’s a
waste of her time, then it is a waste of her time. Period. The question
is: What would make it worth her while?
What is your relationship like? Is that something that you can ask
the reluctant participant in your life? Without being defensive or
reproachful? With a curious mindset because you would honestly
like to know? Asking directly in a 1:1 setting is my preferred route.
⁴³https://sinnvoll-fuehren.com
Houston, we have a problem
69
And I phrase it positively: “What would you like to have happen
that would make the retrospective a good use of your time?”
If you feel like you cannot approach them directly, you can try the
following plan. But first a couple of disclaimers are in order:
Disclaimer 1: I’m not against fun
Don’t get me wrong, fun is good. A happy brain is more creative
and willing to try stuff out, giving the benefit of the doubt. I’ll make
it fun when I can. But retros have to be effective first. That’s the
“must have”. Fun is the “nice to have”.
Disclaimer 2: We cannot force agile on
people
We cannot force people to “be agile”. If someone genuinely doesn’t
want to be there and engage we cannot make them. What would
happen if the reluctant person didn’t have to come? How would
that affect the team? How does it affect the team now that someone
is not engaging?
I’ve stopped forcing people a long time ago. I’ve seen so many
teams invest a lot of energy trying to include someone who didn’t
really want to be part of it. Not everybody is cut out for agile. Not
everybody can be won over. That’s okay. Time will tell if someone
wants to work in an agile team or not. Sometimes it’s best for
everyone if someone leaves the team – As graciously as possible:
Let everyone save face. Certainly no mobbing!
But we’re not there yet. Everybody deserves a fair chance and we’re
trying to include someone.
70
Houston, we have a problem
Disclaimer 3: Is follow-through the
problem?
The plan is based on the assumption that the “waste of time”
impression comes from a (perceived) lack of results from the retro.
If you suspect or know that your teammate has different reasons
than try something else.
For the Future
When I start facilitating in a new team, I want to know if they are
on board with doing retrospectives. The best activity I know for this
is ESVP for “Set the Stage”. If you join a new team, use any of the
general purpose plans and replace the first activity with this one:
ESVP (#1)
5-10 min | Agile Retrospectives
Prepare a flipchart with quadrants for E, S, V, and P. Explain the
concept:
• Explorer: Eager to dive in and research what did and didn’t
work and how to improve.
• Shopper: Positive attitude. Happy if one good things comes
out.
• Vacationer: Reluctant to actively take part but the retro beats
the regular work.
• Prisoner: Only attend because they (feel they) must.
Take a poll (anonymously on slips of paper). Count out the answers
and keep track on the flipchart for all to see. If trust is low,
deliberately destroy the votes afterwards to ensure privacy. Ask
Houston, we have a problem
71
what people make of the data. If there’s a majority of Vacationers
or Prisoners consider using the retro to discuss this finding.
Only use this activity if you know how you will handle prisoners.
In a retro with many people, I’m prepared to let Prisoners go. I’ve
only ever had Prisoners once (in a cross-team retro with 25 people).
I invited them to change their minds and then announced a 5
minute coffee break to let them slip away quietly. I honestly can’t
remember if everyone came back or if the 2 prisoners stayed away.
In a small team I’d throw out whatever I had planned and switch
to the following plan.
The actual plan
Retromat-ID: 81-51-117-81
Outcome Expectations (#81) plus Lean
Coffee (#51)
45 min | Inspired by Jim & Michele McCarthy
Everyone in the team states their goal for the retrospective, i.e. what
they want out of the meeting. Examples of what participants might
say:
• I’m happy if we get 1 good action item
• I want to talk about our argument about unit tests and agree
on how we’ll do it in the future
• I’ll consider this retro a success, if we come up with a plan to
tidy up $obscureModule
Capture the goals on a flipchart.
Houston, we have a problem
72
“The Meet - Core Protocol”, which inspired this activity, also describes ‘Alignment Checks’: Whenever
someone thinks the retrospective is not meeting people’s needs they can ask for an Alignment Check.
Then everyone says a number from 0 to 10 which
reflects how much they are getting what they want.
The person with the lowest number takes over to get
nearer to what they want.
Use the goals as input for a discussion if the goals already make
good topics. Either start with the top one, or dotvote to determine
the order.
If the goals are vague like “I’m happy if we get 1 good action item”
use Lean Coffee.
Track potential action items on a board.
Maximize Follow Through (#117)
15 min | Chris Rimmer
Prepare a flip chart with 4 columns titled ‘Action’, ‘Motivation’,
‘Ease’ and ‘Reminder’. Go through the potential action items from
the last phase. Ask the teams which ones they want to implement.
Write the “winners” into the first column of the table. Read out each
action and fill in the other columns by asking:
• Motivation - How can we motivate ourselves to do this?
• Example: ‘We’ll reward ourselves with cake on Friday if we
do this every day’
• Ease - How can we make it easy to do?
• Example: ‘Move the task board next to Simon’s desk’ for the
action ‘Start involving Simon in the stand up’
• Reminder - How will we remember to do this?
Houston, we have a problem
73
• Examples: ‘Richard will put a reminder in Google Calendar’
or ‘We’ll do this after the stand up each day’
Not all AIs require all of the above.
Afterwards go through the list again and ask how confident they
are that they will implement this action item. If a probability is low,
ask why. Either find ways to increase the chances or drop the action
item entirely and focus on the ones with better prospects.
Outcome Expectations Reloaded (#81)
5-10 min | Inspired by Jim & Michele McCarthy
Before everybody heads out, gather around the first flipchart with
the goals. On a scale of 0 to 10 how close have they gotten to their
goal? What would have made that number go up 1 step?
Follow through & a new phase
You thought you were done? Think again *cue evil laughter*
Seriously, retrospectives are only Step 1 of 2. The second – arguably
more important step – is what happens afterwards. Which is often
enough: nothing. It’s not fair to tell people “come, we’ll look for
improvements” and then not implement a single improvement idea.
When planning the iteration, make sure there’s time for implementing the action items. Have them on the same board as the other
work.
Houston, we have a problem
74
I have no idea what the average follow-through is. For
my teams it’s been between 60-80% of the action items.
Dropped action items tend to be reactions to oneoff situations. Situations that riled up the team and
seemed very important at the time but then tapered
out. That’s why I’m not aiming for 100% followthrough. I always thought 80% would be cool. But
even at 60-80% the teams were happy and improving.
So there’s that.
Let me tell you about the team with the best follow-through I’ve
ever had the pleasure of working with: Each retro they added all
action items and rule changes to a big sheet of flipchart paper. Each
item had a “revisit”-date attached to – the date when the team
thought they’d be able to judge the effect (2, 4 or 6 weeks). At the
beginning of each retro we would go through the list of items to
revisit. Did the team do it? Did it work as intended? If yes, rule
changes were made permanent and actions crossed off. If not, the
items were consciously dropped or changed.
This team had amazing follow-through. To replicate their success,
bring the list of last retro’s agreements to the next one and ask what
happened – for about 5 minutes.
This accomplishes several things:
• It lets the team know that someone cares about what happens.
(Whenever I remember to, I’ll also ask during the iteration –
genuinely curious, not annoyingly. Just as a reminder.)
• The team can spot problems with follow-through early
At least here in Germany, there are several coaches recommending
this kind of checkup in between “Set the Stage” and “Gather Data”
as a new Phase 2. Instead of just going through the list you can also
do something more elaborate and insightful⁴⁴.
⁴⁴https://retromat.org/blog/activities-for-checking-up-on-action-items/
Houston, it’s a really big
problem
So far, the problems were okay-ish. Not nice to have but seemed
solvable. We now approach the kind of situation that makes me
anxious. When the problem is within the team and how people
interact with each other.
For starters, it might be hard to diagnose. Tension is high and the
mood is low, but why? If you suspect that something is wrong but
aren’t quite sure, replace the activity to “Set the Stage” in your next
retrospective with this one:
Spot the Elephant (#130)
10 min | Willem Larsen
Prepare 1 set of cards per team member. A set of cards contains 1
Elephant card, 1 Boot card, 1 Happy Sun card, and 1 Moon card.
Ask them to pick one card from their set:
• If you think there is at least one ‘Elephant in the room’
(unspoken but important problem) for this team, then choose
the Elephant card. Choosing this card doesn’t mean that you
have to talk about the Elephant or even say what you think
the problem is.
• If there are no Elephants, but you got your feelings hurt in an
interaction at least once (and didn’t mention it), choose the
Boot crushing flower card.
• If everything is hunky dory for you, choose the Happy Sun.
Houston, it’s a really big problem
76
• If you’re uncomfortable sharing, or don’t feel like any other
card fits, choose the neutral Moon.
To preserve anonymity, everyone places their chosen card face
down on the feedback pile and the rest of their sets face down on a
discard pile. Shuffle the discard pile to ensure anonymity and put
it aside. Shuffle the feedback pile and then reveal the cards one at
a time.
If your team has 1 or more Elephants in the room, you have some
serious issues with Psychological Safety⁴⁵. Let the team sit with
their new knowledge and offer a larger retrospective soon to make
space for them to share. Do not ask who chose what. Preserve the
anonymity and do not coerce explanations of the chosen card! This
is a critical opportunity to build trust and preserve your ability to
gain insight into the state of the team.
In the same way, depending on the size of your team, two or
more hurt feelings suggest that you may have safety issues. Two or
more Moons also suggests a lack of psychological safety. Take this
feedback into consideration when designing your next retro. There
are lots of great ways to more thoroughly dive into and surface
learnings, this activity just points out when such a retrospective is
needed.
For a remote setting, you can turn this into a vote
between 4 options. Look for a tool that enables people
to cast their vote anonymously, for instance Mentimeter⁴⁶, Poll Everywhere⁴⁷ or Kahoot!⁴⁸.
⁴⁵https://wall-skills.com/2020/what-is-psychological-safety/
⁴⁶https://www.mentimeter.com/
⁴⁷https://www.polleverywhere.com/
⁴⁸https://kahoot.com/
Houston, it’s a really big problem
77
Maybe there is something you can do to build Psychological
Safety⁴⁹ in the meantime?
The following two retrospectives are for teams that are “not working out”. Yet! The possible reasons are manifold and so are the
symptoms.
I always work under the assumption that I don’t have to fix
everything in one retrospective. I can use a soft approach first and
come back with something more “in your face”, if the soft approach
doesn’t work. If the team breaks through after the first approach,
great! If not, try the second.
The plans in this chapter are tricky because the situation is tricky. If you have only just started facilitating
see if someone more experienced can support you.
Just in case that things escalate.
Company Map
Retromat-ID: 136-68-51-48-83
Surprise! (#136)
10 min | Unknown via Andreas Drexhage
I like to start with something light-hearted in retrospectives that
I expect to be hard. People in a good mood are willing to try out
more. And this is a really fun activity:
Prepare by buying a Kinder Surprise Egg (or something similar with
a surprise toy inside) for each participant.
⁴⁹https://wall-skills.com/2020/how-to-build-psychological-safety/
Houston, it’s a really big problem
78
Hand out the eggs at the beginning of the retrospective. Eating the
chocolate is optional, but everybody needs to open their egg and
assemble the toy. Ask “How does your toy represent your role in
this iteration?”
Give everyone a minute to think. Then go around the group for
everyone to present their toy and how they relate to it.
Obviously this activity does not translate well for
remote retros. Is there a digital randomized surprise
you can send?
Company Map (#68) plus Lean Coffee (#51)
40 min | Judith Andresen
The previous activity was already using metaphors. Now we unleash their full power on the team:
Hand out pens and paper. Pose the question ‘What if the company /
department / team was territory? What would a map for it look like?
What hints would you add for save travelling?’ Let participants
draw for 5-10 minutes. Hang up the drawings. Walk through each
one to clarify and discuss interesting metaphors.
Why do I like this activity? Metaphors make it possible to see
and talk about stuff people didn’t even know they were thinking.
If someone draws the team as a valley and every team member
is a lake except for two who are drawn as mountains – that’s
meaningful information.
Did you notice my use of the word “unleash”? Like metaphors
are some ancient beast? That’s because metaphors can be very
revealing. Wield your power gently.
Houston, it’s a really big problem
79
For the record: I love metaphors! Huge fan! I caution
against them here, because the team’s situation is
potentially charged.
If conversations around the drawings don’t give a clear path
forward, use Lean Coffee to prioritize and discuss topics. Listen for
suggestions of action items.
If there are several, dotvote which action items to implement. If
there is only one big decisive issue, consider this activity:
Take a Stand - Line Dance (#48)
10 min | Nick Oostvogels
When the team can’t decide between two options, create a big scale
(i.e. a long line) on the floor with masking tape. Mark one end
as option A) and the other as option B). Team members position
themselves on the scale according to their preference for either
option. Ask people further down the scale “What would we have
to change to make this option more acceptable?” Now tweak the
options until you’ve got the majority of people cluster somewhere
on the line.
Physically taking a stance is very powerful. Both as a
visualization and as a feeling for oneself. In a remote
setting, you could use avatars of the participants on a
virtual board and ask each person to place their avatar
in the appropriate position on a line. Alternatively, the
horizontal axis in a spreadsheet might work. I would
not recommend using the top and bottom of a text
document because that might imply a hierarchy to
some.
Houston, it’s a really big problem
80
Retro Dart (#83)
5-10 min | Philipp Flenker
Draw one or several dartboards on a flip chart. Write a question
next to each dartboard, e.g.
•
•
•
•
We talked about what’s important to me
I spoke openly
I’m confident we’ll improve next iteration
Everybody participated equally
Participants mark their opinion with a sticky dot. Smack in the middle is 100% agreement. Outside the disc is 0% agreement. Debrief by
asking what people notice.
In this chapter, the focus is on human interaction and how that goes
wrong. It’s fine by me if there are no action items coming out of it,
as long the team dynamics improve.
Houston, it’s a really big problem
81
Writing the Unspeakable
There were several times in my life as a team member (not Scrum
Master) when I thought “If I say this out loud the team will implode”.
I’m embarrassed to say that I often kept my mouth shut. I don’t like
conflict. Curiously, I do not shy away from speaking truth to power.
But I do shy away from issues that I think will seriously mess with
the team dynamic. Even if the team dynamic is really, really shitty.
Fortunately, in this plan we only need one team member to have
the courage to speak up or rather write up. It is my last try when I
think “If the team splits up after this it might be better for everyone.
Because we can’t go on like this.”
Sometimes teams do indeed split after a big shout out. Other times
the dust settles, the air is clear and everything falls into place. The
team really starts working together. Either way, if it works it will
not be comfortable⁵⁰.
Retromat-ID: 42-75-137-51-125-138
Postcards (#42)
10-15 min | 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.
⁵⁰https://retromat.org/blog/my-most-important-retrospectives-were-horrible/
Houston, it’s a really big problem
82
Writing the Unspeakable (#75)
10 min | Unknown, via Vanessa
Do you suspect that unspoken taboos are holding back the team?
Consider this silent activity: Stress confidentiality (‘What happens
in Vegas stays in Vegas’) and announce that all notes of this activity
will be destroyed in the end. Only afterwards hand out a piece of
paper to each participant to write down the biggest unspoken taboo
in the team / company.
When everyone’s done, they pass their paper to their left-hand
neighbors. The neighbors read and may add comments. Papers are
passed on and on until they return to their authors. One last read.
Then all pages are ceremoniously shredded or burned.
Alternatively, you can make this activity (semi-)anonymous⁵¹: Instead of passing their papers they all hand it to you. You shuffle,
read them out loud and destroy the notes.
Hold the silence for at least 30 seconds so that the unspeakable
truths can sink in.
Dare, Care, Share (#137) plus Lean Coffee
(#51)
30 min | Juliana Stepanova
Display three categories:
• Dare … is for bold wishes, ideas and suggestions; to address
pain points; anything that is important to mention but might
need courage to raise
⁵¹You might recognize the handwriting. Of course, you will keep your extra information
confidential.
Houston, it’s a really big problem
83
• Care … is for troubles and worries; things that aren’t happening but should; areas for improvement
• Share … is for any kind of information that team members
want to share with each other; feedback, news, …
Ask each participant to write down at least 1 sticky note per
category and set the timer to 5 minutes. Afterwards go around
and let each participant read out their notes and post them in the
appropriate category.
Use Lean Coffee to prioritize and discuss the topics.
Three by Three (#125)
15 min | Simon Tomes
Again, with this plan the focus is on human interaction and shared
understanding. There doesn’t have to be an action item.
If you feel that there should be one, consider this silent brainstorming technique. It helps the team come up with truly creative
solutions and gives quiet people equal footing:
•
•
•
•
Everyone writes 3 sticky notes with 1 action idea each
Go around the room and pitch each idea in 15 seconds
Gather all stickies so that everyone can see them
Each team member adds their name to the sticky note that
inspires them the most
• Take off all ideas without a name on them
Repeat this process 2 more times. Afterwards, everyone can dot
vote to determine which action(s) the team is going to implement.
Houston, it’s a really big problem
84
Debriefing Cube (#138)
5 min | Chris Caswell and Julian Kea
A good debriefing deepens understanding, learning and sharing.
Preparation: Download and assemble the Debriefing Cube and
cards⁵². During the retrospective, roll the cube. Then draw a card
from the category it shows and use it to prompt a discussion. Repeat
as time permits.
The cube is too random? Here are debriefing questions from the
cube that fit this plan:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Did you assume anything that turned out to be wrong?
What was the defining moment that changed things?
How could you have made the process more / less pleasant?
What was this experience like?
How did you deal with your emotions?
When did you care most/least about the outcome?
What did you learn about yourself and the team?
What would an expert make of your experience?
Keeping my fingers crossed that your team starts to gel!
⁵²https://wall-skills.com/2019/the-debriefing-cube/
Time to say goodbye
Eventually teams break up. It can be a relief but it usually is a sad
event. The following retrospective is appropriate for teams that are
sad to see each other leave.
First off, if your team has established some sort of tradition, do that.
Icecream on Wednesdays? Dress-Up Fridays? Potluck lunch at the
last day of the month? If you’ve got something that’s special to you,
use that and roll with it. If you don’t, consider the following:
Take the team out to eat to a place that’s not too loud and crowded.
Everybody has to be able to hear everybody else at the table. If the
team is big, consider ordering take out into a nice meeting room.
After everyone has placed their order, it’s time for a fun round of
trivia.
Retromat-ID: 106-27-67-101
Who said it? (#106)
10-15 min | Beccy Stafford
For this one, you need quotes from the team members. Spend some
time looking through email threads, chat logs, ticket discussions,
commit messages and the like. Collect funny, profound or otherwise
notewhorthy quotes without context. Write them down with the
name of the person who said them.
When you’ve all settled in at the restaurant, read out the quotes.
Ask the team to guess who said it - the source may not self-identify!
Often the team will not only know who said it, but also talk about
what was going on at the time.
86
Time to say goodbye
Enjoy yourselves and the food. Once plates are fairly empty, maybe
while your waiting for dessert, introduce
Retrospective Cookies (#27)
15 min | Adam Weisbart
This is another activity you have to prepare, by either buying the
fortune cookies from Adam Weisbart⁵³ or writing prompts down
on paper, folding them up and putting them in a jar. Examples for
questions:
• What was the most effective thing you did this for this team
/ project, and why was it so successful?
• Did our boards reflect reality? Why or why not?
• What did you contribute to the development community in
your company?
• What was the team’s biggest impediment this project?
One by one everybody gets to pick, read out their prompt and
answer the question they’ve gotten.
Take Aways (#67)
10 min | Judith Andresen
What are participants taking away from their experience in this
team? What would they like to recreate in their next team? Give
participants 5 minutes to ponder these questions and write them
down.
Ask them to read out their notes for everyone to hear. Hopefully
by now everyone is sufficiently teary-eyed (“Who keeps cutting
onions?”) to part with a round of
⁵³https://weisbart.com/shop/tools-toys/tools/retrospective-cookies/
Time to say goodbye
87
Endless Blessings (#101)
5-10 min | Bernie DeKoven via Diana Larsen
Sit or stand in a circle. Explain that you will collect good wishes for
the teams and projects people will join next. You will be building
on each other’s blessings. If you do it for the first time, start the
activity by giving the first blessing. Then go around the circle to
add to your blessing. Skip over people who can’t think of anything.
When you are losing steam, ask for another blessing to start another
round. Continue until no one can think of blessings anymore.
Example:
• You start with ‘May we all join worthwhile projects’.
• Your neighbor continues with ‘And may they delight their
customers’.
• Their neighbor wishes ‘And may we they find product-marketfit rightaway’.
• And so on until ideas for additions to this blessing run out.
• Then someone else can start a new round, e.g. with ‘May your
next team write beautiful code’.
That’s it. Have fun just hanging out until the bar closes up. Have a
round of hugs for all the hug-positive people in your team.
Great, now I have to think about all the great teams I had the
privilege to be a part of sniff
In a remote setting, try to have food delivered at
the same time or send around a simple receipe that
everyone cooks.
Planning a retrospective
Now you’re almost at the end of the book. As much as I hope you
liked the plans in here, I hope even more that you will go on to
create plans of your own. Amazing plans! There is no “one right
way” to plan a retrospective. Just to give you an example, I’ll show
you how I plan my retros. Take what you can use and replace the
rest:
Even though I know a lot of activities by heart, I use Retromat every
time I plan a retrospective. I’ll hit that “New random retrospective
plan”-button until I like the suggestion for Gather data, the second
of the phases of a retrospective. You might have noticed that some
of the plans in this book are named after their activity in Gather
data. That’s because I think of the Gather data activity as the
defining one that sets the tone of the retro.
“Liking” an activity includes that it’s fitting for the team’s situation.
Is there something that the team is struggling with? A topic they
should address? I also check my notes to make sure that I haven’t
used this activity in the last 5 retrospectives with this team. Asking
the same questions will lead to the same answers, so I always use
different activities.
Once I settled on an activity for Gather data, I stop using the
“Random”-button and use the arrow buttons for Set the stage.
Sometimes I have an idea for an activity that would complement the
one I already picked and click to find it. Most times I just browse
through all activities in the phase until I find one that fits to the
picked one.
Depending on how much time I have left to fill, I will repeat this for
Generate insight and Decide what to do or resort to my trusted Lean
Coffee. Lastly, I use the arrows to browse Close the retrospective. If
Planning a retrospective
89
I can adapt parts from Set the stage or Gather data, I will repeat
them here, e.g. using “Constellation (#52 / #53)” to begin and end
the retro.
Retro notes - left column to prepare, right column for follow-up
What’s in a phase?
Don’t be constrained by what phase an activity belongs to in Retromat. For technical reasons, each activity is in exactly 1 phase. But
some activities in Gather data could arguably belong in Generate
insight and vice versa.
Likewise general prompts in Close the retrospective can also be
used in Gather data and vice versa. Gather data activities usually
have more categories whereas Close the retrospective activities are
simpler, e.g. “4 Ls (#78)” is in Gather data and “Plus & Delta (#40)”
is in Close the retrospective.
Feel free to override Retromat’s defaults. Find out the ID of an
activity, change the plan ID in the URL and hit enter.
Planning a retrospective
90
Example: The ID of the Feelings plan is 82-7-51-38-60. If you paste
it into the URL like this
https://retromat.org/en/?id=82-7-51-38-60⁵⁴
and press enter, you’ll see that both activity #7 and activity #51
belong in Gather data according to Retromat. I decided to ignore
past Corinna’s phase assignment and changed the URL to have (on
the surface) two Gather datas and no Generate insight.
Adapt and prepare
Once I have my basic plan outline, I will print it out. I write
adjustments into the margins, strike through parts I will not use,
make up new questions etc. I rarely use a plan completely “as is”.
As my last step, I take notes of things I need to prepare. Is there
anything that requires more than the standard supplies in a sipgate
meeting room? Depending on what’s missing, I’ll either go prepare
right away or block enough time in my calendar to do it later. If
a team is humming along, I plan the retro on the day before. It
takes 10-30 minutes. If there’s trouble brewing, I think about the
upcoming retro a lot and start planning at least a week in advance.
That’s it. That’s how I plan retros.
Of course, there are tons of sources other than Retromat, such as
funretrospectives.com⁵⁵ or blog posts. Personally, I rarely use them.
But I used to read tons of blog posts back in 2010, before Retromat.
⁵⁴https://retromat.org/en/?id=82-7-51-38-60
⁵⁵https://www.funretrospectives.com
Inventing custom
activities
Some people love coming up with their own activities and mad
props to them. New activities gotta come from somewhere. I rarely
create new activities because I don’t want to re-invent the wheel. If
somebody else thought of something that works, I’m happy to use
it. And because of my work on Retromat I’m aware of A LOT of
activities and variations that work beautifully.
If you’re different and would like to create your own activities (or
have to, because you can’t find a good fit) the following are good
prompts:
•
•
•
•
Holidays
Sport events
Company events
Something the team is struggling with
Only activities of the last category are in Retromat such as “Lines
of Communication (#86)” or “Quartering - Identify boring stories
(#64)”. The other categories are too particular to certain cultures. If
you want an activity from those, invent away or find them on the
intarwebs.
When creating activities go for something that fits to your organization, country, culture or religion. Use elements the participants
are familiar with. In Germany that means that refering to Soccer
usually works, refering to American Football usually doesn’t.
Inventing custom activities
92
Let’s create a Christmas activity
Christmas is the most important holiday in Germany. It’s what I’m
familiar with. You can use the same process to create something for
any kind of holiday or event. Be it for Rosh Hashanah, Eid, Diwali,
Chinese New Year, Easter, … Whatever is upcoming and important
in your part of the world.⁵⁶ Let your imagination run wild!
Start associating. When you hear “Christmas”, what comes to
mind? Mistletoe, stockings, “A Christmas Carol”, … Wait! these are
all from English-speaking countries.
“A Christmas Carol” is relatively common knowledge in Germany.
There’s a powerful activity that you could do based on it, especially
for teams that are not doing well: You could have each team
member write down what the Ghost of Iterations Past, Ghost of
Iterations Present and Ghost of Iterations Future would show them.
I.e. how the team used to be, how it’s working together now and
how it will be if nothing changes. Then look for actions that will
create a better future.
I love the idea but it’s potentially glum and negative. Not sure I
want to lead on to the holidays with a downer. Let’s keep looking.
In Germany we have Adventskalender, children write to Weihnachtsmann (Santa Claus), Santa has elves helping with the
presents, a sleigh with reindeers (no Rudolph, though), …
You could do an advent calendar: one question inviting reflection
for each day. Pick from the abundance of questions by @retroflection on Twitter⁵⁷. The team could open the calendar each day after
standup and ponder the question. Nice idea. Good in addition to
retrospectives, not instead. Next!
Well, a straight-forward activity would be “Write a letter to Santa
with wishes for the team”. This could be a riff on the “Miracle
⁵⁶Other cultures’ holidays are fascinating to me. If you create an activity, would you tell me
about it? corinna@retromat.org
⁵⁷https://twitter.com/Retroflection
Inventing custom activities
93
Question” from Solution-Focused Coaching⁵⁸. “Wish granted (#50)”
in Retromat is similar.
After making the wish you invite participants to imagine their work
after the wish had been granted. In great detail. Since Santa Claus
isn’t real, invite them to be their own Christmas elves. What can
they do to turn their fantasy future into reality. How can they get
one step closer?
I think we’ve got a winner. Let’s roll with this one and use it in a
plan.
Bonus plan: A Christmas Retro
To invoke the holiday spirit I would bring ginger bread, fir tree
branches for the smell and flickering light for a cozy atmosphere.
For Set the stage I looked through all activities in Retromat to make
one “Christmassy”. None seemed fitting. One search for “Christmas
retrospective” later, I see Santa faces⁵⁹ and voila:
Emoticon Project Gauge (#32) goes
Christmas
5 min | Andrew Ciccarelli
Search and print images of Santa looking
•
•
•
•
shocked / surprised
nervous / stressed
unempowered / constrained
confused
⁵⁸https://coachingleaders.co.uk/solution-focus-how-to-use-the-miracle-question/
⁵⁹https://stevesitton.com/2016/12/christmas-retrospective-many-faces-of-santa/
94
Inventing custom activities
• happy
• mad
• overwhelmed
Let each team member choose which Santa reflects how they feel
about the iteration. They can also give a short reason, if they want
to.
Letter to Santa
20 min | Corinna Baldauf
Hand out pens and paper. Give the team members 10 minutes to
write a letter to Santa Claus making one big wish for the team.
When everyone is done, go around the circle and read out the letters.
Are there common themes? The following activity will work better
if several participants make the same wish.
Wish granted (#50)
15-20 minutes | Source: Lydia Grawunder & Sebastian Nachtigall
Give participants 2 minutes to silently ponder the following question: ‘Santa grants your wish and it comes true overnight. You come
to work the next morning. How can you tell that Santa granted your
wish? What is different now?’ Let everyone describe their ‘Wish
granted’-workplace. Participants with the same wish can imagine
and describe together.
The more details people describe the more tangible and desirable
this future becomes. Keep asking for sense impressions, behavior,
… It will lead to better action items.
Inventing custom activities
95
Be the elf you wish to see in the world
15-20 min | Corinna Baldauf
Alas, we all know that Santa Claus isn’t real. Invite the team to be
their own Christmas elves. What can they do to turn their wishful
future into reality. How can they get one step closer? If there are
many suggestions, dotvote which action items the team is going to
implement.
Emoticon Project Gauge (#32) goes
Christmas – again
5 min | Andrew Ciccarelli
Reuse the Santa faces from the beginning. This time ask which
Santa reflects how they feel about the retrospective.
Ho ho ho! Have fun!
Appendix
My facilitation style
Does my facilitation style influence the activities I pick for retrospectives? I’m not sure. It does influence where I sit: To the side. I
try to melt into the background. I want the participants to talk to
each other. I’m there to provide structure and thought-provoking
questions. I’m not a show master. Apart from instructions, I should
not be the focus of their attention.
In general, I am very hands-off in my facilitation. Compared to
other facilitators in my vicinity I talk very little and interrupt the
flow rarely. When I do, it’s usually with a question.
Maybe I’m lucky that I work with teams that need little guidance.
But I think it’s also something particular to me. My mantra is
“Everybody is the expert for their own situation” from Solutionfocused Coaching. Instead of “You are off-topic” I would say “Our
topic was X. It sounds like you’re now discussing Y. Is that what
you want?” Because who am I to say which of the two topics is
more important to them. They decide.
This is more difficult in a teaching role, such as during an agile
transition. If the company wants to become more agile and the
team is honing in on a solution that violates agile principles, that’s
a problem. I would let the team discuss all kinds of solution, and
hope that a team member objects a non-agile solution. That’s more
powerful than if I do it. But if they seem to settle on the non-agile
solution I would point out the violation.
Other situations where I do jump in:
• Discussion is going in circles
97
Appendix
• I suspect that they are avoiding something, e.g. taking responsibility
• Disruptive behavior, esp. repeatedly
• Personal attacks, raised voices and high emotions
This “giving structure and otherwise stepping back” approach
definitely influences how “Decide what to do” works in my retros:
It’s often not a distinct phase. Instead I pluck actions from the
discussion, either as suggestions or decisions. I read the room to
see which is which. Before I mark anything as a “decided” action
item I confirm, e.g. by asking “There seems to be broad support for
this proposal. Can I write it down as an action item?”
For beginners, I recommend a more structured approach to action
items. People get really angry when you mark something as “decided” when they don’t feel that they had a say in it.
TimeTimer
Something that helps with my laid back style are TimeTimers. A
TimeTimer looks similar to an analog watchface but instead of
telling time it tells remaining time: You set a timebox by pulling
out a red disk. As soon as you let go, the red disk slowly starts
retreating back below the white parts. That way you always have
a pie chart of the remaining time. Elegant, easy to use and highly
visible!
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Source: timetimer.com
Using a TimeTimer means that most people are aware of time and
try to stay within the limit. And when the time is up, the timer
beeps and I don’t have to interrupt. The Timer does it for me. It
works beautifully.
Bias towards writing
For almost every activity I give some quiet time to think about and
write down answers. That levels the playing field for less outspoken
people.
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Meta Critique
Last but not least, I complement the “hands-off” approach during
the retro with a very explicit “meta critique” directly after the retro.
Meta critique can cover interactions, topics and solutions – this
retro in comparison to hundreds of other retros and meetings.
Here’s an example of such a meta critique: “You’ve off-handedly
mentioned that person X’s behaviour is detrimental for team Y. Yet
doing anything about this behaviour is not part of your solution.
From my perspective it looks like your action item will work around
issues with X. That seemed very strange to me. Worth pointing out.”
In meta critique I’m just sharing an observation, something to
ponder. The team can dwell on it. There’s always the next retro.
If it’s important it will come up again.
Meta critique as a tool becomes more valuable the more experience
you gather. It works best with teams that picked you and want your
advice. Always ask the team if it wants feedback before sharing a
meta critique.
For the record, this is just my style. It’s not “the right way” to do
it. I’ve seen all kinds of facilitation styles work. My flip charts are
ugly. I never bring sweets. I do follow up on action items.
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Tuckman’s Stages of Team
Development
According to Tuckman⁶⁰, newly-formed teams go through certain
stages, before they work well together:
⁶⁰http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/63/6/384/
Appendix
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1. Forming
The team comes together. Everyone is on their best behavior and
mostly focused on themselves – trying to figure out the team’s goal
and their role and responsibilities within it.
2. Storming
Working styles and personalities clash. Only 50% of teams hit this
stage, the others go straight to Norming. Storming isn’t necessarily
a bad thing: “Disagreements within the team can make members
stronger, more versatile, and able to work more effectively as
a team.” Unfortunately some teams never grow past this stage
because of frequent changes in team membership, leadership or
goals.
3. Norming
Team members resolve their differences. They grow to respect and
appreciate each other and tolerate each others whims. They can ask
for help and give constructive feedback. They share a common goal
and everyone takes responsibility. The team starts to deliver more.
4. Performing
The team hums along. Their processes support them. The team is
incredibly productive and great things happen. It’s an awesome
time to be part of the team.
4 and a half. Stagnating (No official stage)
A team can hit this stage when it stays together for too long:
members don’t learn much anymore because there are no new
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people to learn from. Sometimes members don’t enjoy working
with each other anymore and their job satisfaction and results
suffer.
(This is not an official Tuckman stage: Heidi Helfand described it⁶¹
and it matches what I’ve observed.)
5. Adjourning
The team members know that they are going their separate ways,
e.g. because the project is nearing completion or the organisation
is changing. It’s time to grieve and move on.
The stages are not strictly linear: some teams skip a stage, others
oscillate between stages. Furthermore, recent research suggests that
a team can be in several stages at the same time – the stage depends
on the topic. They might be performing in writing code and still
storming about how to best test this code.
If you are looking for plans for a certain Tuckman stage, try
• Forming – Newly-formed Teams
• Storming – The Houston-chapters about problems and really
big problems
• Norming – Laundry Day
• Performing – General purpose plans
• Adjourning – Goodbye
⁶¹http://www.heidihelfand.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/
agile2016ReteamingSlidesHeidiHelfand.pdf