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Fresh Ideas for Retrospectives??
Hi,
I have been doing retrospectives now for a good year or so, and find that I constantly require new ideas for retrospectives to keep things exciting. I have acquired Agile Retrospectives (Esther Derby & Diana Larsen) and have used many of the excercises from the book, which have worked really well, but in keeping with adapting and improving, I would really like to know if there are other books or sites which have more exercises I can use for the retrospectives.
Any help would be appreciated. :-)
I have been doing retrospectives now for a good year or so, and find that I constantly require new ideas for retrospectives to keep things exciting. I have acquired Agile Retrospectives (Esther Derby & Diana Larsen) and have used many of the excercises from the book, which have worked really well, but in keeping with adapting and improving, I would really like to know if there are other books or sites which have more exercises I can use for the retrospectives.
Any help would be appreciated. :-)
Tags: agile, retrospectives, scrum
Views: 137
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Ilja Preuß on -
Take a look at http://delicious.com/ipreuss/retrospectives+exercise
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Permalink Reply by Lisa van Aswegen on -
Thanks so much - really useful. :-)
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Permalink Reply by Kym Phillpotts on -
Maybe useful: http://theagileleap.blogspot.com/2009/04/retrospective-agenda-high-...
Have you considered rotating who "runs" the retrospective. In my opinion, running the retrospective is really about just being a "facilitator".
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Permalink Reply by Lisa van Aswegen on
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Thanks for the info. Unfortunately, there is no one else who can run these, but thanks for the suggestion. :-)
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Permalink Reply by John Reber on -
Run them down the pub/bar/cafe/starbucks. Apologies if this sounds like a flippant response but you'll be amazed what a change in environment can bring to your retrospectives.
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Permalink Reply by Lisa van Aswegen on
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Hi John,
Thanks for this - I did try after a few retros, but found that it got so rowdy that we didn't really achieve what we needed to. All the team members did prefer being out the office, but like I said, was just a casual drinks afternoon versus an actual retrospective. Also I had to take all the flipchart boards etc with, which was an exercise on it's own... What we do now is, if the guys want to have a drink after the retro we do that. But mostly I can't attend as I have 4 retros in one day.
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Permalink Reply by Ilja Preuß on
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In my experience, you can do a more casual, but still quite valuable retrospective in a pub, if you adjust the exercises to the circumstances. I once did one where all that was needed was a bunch of pens and index cards. I wrote it down here: http://iljapreuss.blogspot.com/2008/03/lightweight-appreciative-ret...
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Permalink Reply by Lisa van Aswegen on
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LOL - thanks that was a fun read. Sounds similar to what I did at the pub - I share the same problem...the one about not writing down the suggestions before we left... :-)
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Permalink Reply by Urs Enzler on -
Counter-question: do you really need that much change? I'm asking because we do retrospectives for about 2 years on my team and we normally use the same structure for the retrospective. Our benefit is that we have very productive retrospectives because everybody knows the process and we keep improving this structure.
From time to time we use a different structure if we want to take a look at us from another perspective or are trying to surface problems that wouldn't rise in the "standard" structure. But this is only occasionally.
The team members don't get bored because our retrospectives consist mainly of discussing problems/solutions/ideas with almost no "process-overhead".
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