The Scrum Retrospective meeting is an important opportunity for the team to inspect the Sprint and look at ways that it can improve in the future. However, it can be challenging to keep these meetings lively and for discussion not to stagnate. Below I look at a few easy ways to liven up your Retrospectives.

Constellation game

This game can be excellent when team members are reticent about openly sharing their thoughts and opinions. The fact that they don’t need to verbalise their thoughts can make it easier for them to contribute.

Place an object in the middle of the room and have the team gather round it in a circle. The object represents the centre of the Universe.

The Scrum Master reads out statements such as:

“I feel that I can freely share my views in a Retrospective”

“Our Continuous Integration process is effective”

“We spend an appropriate length of time in the Daily Scrum meeting”

Team members respond to the statements by moving towards the centre of the Universe if they agree with the statement, and away from it if they disagree. The participants’ answers are therefore revealed by their positions in the resulting ‘constellation’.

The more a participant agrees, the closer they move to the centre – so a close circle means all participants strongly agree with the statement. The opposite is also true – if they participants are far apart, then they disagree with the statement. You may also find outliers, where a particular team member has a different opinion to everyone else.

Anonymous Writing

Perhaps there are issues that nobody wants to discuss, or certain members who are reluctant to speak up. This technique can help to alleviate the issue.

Team members write their concerns/points on a piece of paper without allowing anyone else to see. The pieces of paper are then placed into a box and mixed up. Each team member then picks out a piece of paper and reads it aloud. This acts as the starting point for a discussion. Participants who raised a particular issue often find that others also share the same opinion.

Change location

Using the same location over and over can cause stagnation in idea generation. Simply changing the location of the Retrospective can have a beneficial effect. Perhaps try a coffee shop, an outdoor space (if the weather allows!) or a unique meeting room.

Draw the Sprint

The team is given a series of questions which they answer in the form of pictures, rather than words. Once everyone has finished drawing, the team look at each person’s drawings in turn. The person who drew the pictures doesn’t explain them, but the other members try and work out what the pictures mean.

The creator of the drawings may of course help the team if they get stuck.

Lego Building

This technique is very easy to explain: team members build models out of Lego that they feel represent the last Sprint.

Ensure you have enough bricks for this and enough space for people to build their models. Also make sure that you have enough time (remember the time box of 3 hours).

Once everyone has built their model, they speak about how it represents their opinions of the Sprint. This part is important, as it may be difficult to build models of certain aspects of the Sprint, and some models are likely to be more abstract than others.

Following this, ask the team members to build a model that represents something that the team should start doing in the next Sprint.

The models that have been built can be displayed in the team room during the next Sprint to remind the team of what was discussed and agreed.

Car Brand

This is another simple technique where the team is asked “If the Sprint was a car, what would it be?”

If the Sprint went perfectly, many people will probably answer ‘Ferrari’. If the Sprint didn’t go too well they might say ‘Lada’.

Once everyone has chosen a car, get the team members to explain why they chose that particular car.

Following this, ask people to choose how they would improve their car for the next Sprint. Perhaps they’d add central locking to keep away interfering stakeholders, or perhaps it needs a new engine (PC) because it’s slowing them down.

Duncan Halley is a web developer and certified Scrum Master (PSM I). You can read his blog here.

Follow him on Twitter: @duncanhalley

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