Imagine you’re working on a task you’ve been assigned with a lot of dedication and perseverance. You’re giving it a lot of effort and you are sure that the outcome will be excellent. When you finally turn it around - something disappointing happens, it does not turn out to be as expected. You could either toss it all off and restart in utter frustration - or you could retrospect on what went wrong, what could have been done differently, get a few opinions from people with expertise in the domain and then start with a new perspective.
On an organizational level, the above activity is called a retrospective meeting. At the end of each project, the team sits down and discusses its last working cycle. In a collective effort to learn from the things that went downhill and appreciate the ones that went well - the members provide feedback based on their observations. An important point to remember here is that the focus of such meetings is not to pinpoint the blame on someone or catch the black sheep, but to provide a safe space to review and work on opportunities for process betterment.
It is a total possibility that you think that retros would be boring like a few of your zoom calls that irk your nerves, but hold on! With the right mix of scrum retrospective ideas and cool game ideas, your team could have one of the most productive and the most fun retrospective meetings.
Don’t believe us? Read on to discover some cool retro meeting games to play during your retrospective meetings:
What’s your pick?
In this really fun retro meeting game, the team members get to choose one of each of the following categories to describe the last sprint.
A movie name
A superhero or a supervillain
A character from a book/movie/web series
This is a great way to break the ice and start the retro on a light note.
How to play?
Each member writes their choices against the titles and then goes on to explain why they picked those.
Example:
Sam picked "The Nun” as the movie name, "Batman" as the superhero, and "The Professor" from Money Heist as a character. When asked about his movie choice, he said that he felt he was always under the radar and micromanaged which hampered his productivity. The planning of the sprint had been done well hence he chose the character of "The Professor". His team members were always available for him whenever he sought their help and hence his movie choice was "Batman".
How do you feel?
In this game, the host would put up a few emojis on his screen or board - mainly those of laughing, smiling, sad, confused, stressed, etc. The teammates can pick two emojis each to showcase their mood during the task iteration. Focussing on individual members, hearing about their feelings, and taking their feedback seriously could go a long way for any organization. The team could go around and focus on each member and their explanation for choosing an emoji.
How to play?
Each member picks two emojis from the deck of emojis displayed on the screen and gives their reasons for the same.
Example:
Rachel from the front-end development team picks stressed and smiling emojis. When asked why she chose them - for the stressed emoji she explained that the design team gave a lot of last-minute changes that were not pre-discussed due to which she had to work a few extra nights. The rest of her experience was smooth, and it all worked out in the end, so she chose the smiling emoji.
The 4Ls - Liked, Learned, Lacked, and Longed for
This game is the most productive yet coolest game you could play in your retro meeting. Give four cards to each of the members with the titles listed above. Under Liked, they have to mention what they liked about the iteration. In Learned, they have to mention their learnings, both skill-wise and personal. In Lacked, they have to mention what the team lacked and could strive to improve and in the fourth segment, they have to jot down points, facilities, or anything else that if the team would have had, the outcome of the work cycle could have been better.
How to play?
Each member notes down their thoughts against each L and then discusses it in brief.
Example:
Natalie wrote the following points in her respective cards:
- Liked- The deadlines weren’t stressful. Considerable time was given to the team to turn around the task.
- Learned- Before the build is sent to the QA team, it should be bug-free and tested thoroughly by all developers so that release is not delayed. Also learned about a new python package.
- Lacked- Communication between the front end and the backend team could have been better to minimize delays.
- Longed- A daily 10 min call to take status updates from the entire team so that everyone could track the progress of the task and could communicate their requirements to all people at once.
Double Ws: wells and worries
As a facilitator, you might be interested in games that are not focused on individual members but instead on groups which could also promote likeability and bonding among teammates. In this game, the team should form pairs. As a conclusive thought, they will write down on a sheet what they think went well in the last work cycle and what went wrong. After one iteration, switch up the pairs in a way that one person stays with the sheet and gets a new partner while the other person moves to a different pair. This way, the entire team can communicate on the positives and negatives.
How to play?
The pair writes their combined conclusion on both wells and worries and then the pair is switched up.
Example:
Ron and Rachel as a team pair wrote "All deadlines met by the team" under Wells and "Not enough communication between teams" under Worries. After this, Ron moved on to a new team and Sammy joined Rachel as her pair. She pointed out to Rachel that deadlines were met but the team also worked a few extra nights because of a lack of a second resource for design so they listed that under worries.
Superhero with Superpowers
In all of our above retro activities, we have focused on getting feedback from the team and its activities and for the team - we didn’t focus on individuals. In this game, we would focus on an individual team member and how he felt about his contribution to the work sprint. Here, each member will write down one superpower (a good quality) they have that helped the team reach the goal. While they do that, they also have to mention a not-so-super power wherein they felt they lacked while the sprint was ongoing and would improve on the same.
While a team member shares their qualities, the rest of the teammates can write down agree/disagree against their name on a google sheet. In the end, the facilitator can view all sheets and discuss the disagreements with the team.
How to play?
Each member writes down their superpower and not-so-super power and then conveys the same to the team.
Example:
Ron said that communication was his superpower as he liked doing it and hence, there were no misses in communicating anything from his team’s end during the sprint. He also said that planning his tasks’ breakdown was something he was still working on and wasn’t very good at. Most of the team agreed with both points.
Few games to close the retro meeting productively
Now that you know these five cool retro games - do you think your work as a facilitator is over? Not really. As important as it is to conduct retrospectives, it is equally important to check if the purpose for the retrospective was served and that the feedback has been understood and taken well by the team. You wouldn’t want to catch up three months later after a different sprint in different retrospectives tackling the same problems - right? To make sure that doesn’t happen, here are two fun retro games you could conduct at the end of the retro to gauge how effective your retrospective meeting was.
Two Takeaways
Here, each team member will mention their two key takeaways - a. What are they taking away from today’s retro as a team? b. What are they taking away from today’s retro as an individual?
In the points, they have to mention the most important thing they learned during the retro.
Energy Bar
On a scale of 1-100 (1 being the lowest energy and 100 being the highest), ask each team member their energy percentage to move on to the next sprint with the team after the retro meeting. If their answer is below 60, you might need to take this up with them and understand their perspective.
You can use Sup Bot to organise the most fun online retrospective games mentioned above asynchronously or you could also opt for an online retrospective tool.
An easy way to go through team progress is to have a report of all the work people did in the past. Tools like Sup Bot for Slack can help you collect follow-ups and generate reports from them.
Add to Slack
Add to Teams
Add to WebexFrequently asked questions
1. What is the purpose of a retrospective?
The purpose of a retrospective meeting is to improve the quality and effectiveness of the upcoming Sprint by reflecting on the recently concluded Sprint.
2. What are the 5 stages of a retrospective?
The 5 stages of a retrospective meeting are-Setting the stage, gathering the data, generating insights, deciding what to do, and closing the retrospective meeting.
3. What is a retrospective in agile?
In agile, a retrospective is a time for the development team to reflect what went well in the last Sprint and what can be improved.
4. Who should run retrospective?
It is usually the Scrum Master who conducts a retrospective meeting. But some teams also have the product owner or the product manager running it.
5. How do you set up a retrospective meeting?
To set up a retrospective in Slack, determine the frequency and timing, prepare an agenda, and create a retrospective follow-up or form using Sup Bot.
