Agile Retrospectives

2.5 Selecting Activities

After you have the bare bones of the retrospective—the goal, duration, attendees, room, and setup—it’s time to think about activities. Activities are timeboxed processes that help the team move through the phases of the retrospective. Activities provide structure to help your team think together and have several advantages over freewheeling discussion.

Activities do the following:

Encourage Equal Participation    With more than five people it’s hard for everyone to participate in a conversation. Working in smaller groups makes it more likely that people will hear and be heard.

Focus the Conversation    Activities have a particular goal that frames the conversation. That reduces (but does not eliminate) the chance of tangential drift.

Encourage New Perspectives    Activities bring people outside their day-to-day modes of thinking and can encourage new ideas. Activities don’t have to be elaborate or involved to be effective. Examples of activities that are useful in retrospectives include Brainstorming, Voting with Dots, doing Check-Ins, and performing Pair Interviews.

Choose activities that support the goal of the retrospective. If there’s no way to discuss the activity that makes a connection between the activity and the work, omit it. We’re not against games and simulations—in fact we use them often—when they serve a purpose and move the retrospective forward. Icebreakers, energizers, and games that don’t relate to the work don’t fit in retrospectives. ...