Gamify your retrospective!

I see a lot of teams struggling with their retrospectives. Some of the most common challenges I see are:

• The same people are always talking.
• During the "gather data" stage, many insights are collected, but only a few get discussed and even fewer get actionable next steps.
• The Scrum Master is driving the conversation.
• It is mainly focused on things that went wrong and, therefore, can get quite demotivating or even depressing.
• Gathering everyone's ideas on post-it notes, grouping them, and discussing them one by one gets dull.

I shared my first attempt to gamify a retrospective in an earlier article. Since then, I've simplified it and run multiple online and offline iterations. In this article, I'll share how I ran my latest in-person session. If you are interested, you can find a Mural Template of an earlier iteration here.

Preparation and materials

Besides the usual pens and post-it notes to collect ideas for improvement, you will need a die (dice) and some pawns to represent the players during the "game".

Tip: you can easily run the session online using a whiteboarding tool like Mural, Miro, or Microsoft Whiteboard, combined with a physical die that people have to show in front of the camera or one of the numerous online tools like DiceWithFriends.

You can ask the team to bring an item smaller than a post-it note to the meeting or prepare some unique pawns yourself.

Tip: when people bring their pawn, you can invite them to explain why or how that pawn tells something about themselves.

Prepare several post-it notes with the words IMPROVE, FEEDBACK, CHALLENGE, THANKFUL, preferably in different colors. And use them to create a simple game board in a form you like.

In my last iteration, I used about ten post-its with IMPROVE and five for all the others. But you can make the game board as big as you want. You might not be able to finish a round within a session, but my experience is that it doesn't really matter.

Tip: Instead of pre-creating the board, you can also ask the team to create the game board during the session.

You need a couple of challenge cards that should contain simple tasks, questions, or statements. You can come up with them yourself. E.g., "What is your favorite television series at the moment? Convince the team why they should start watching it too", "Tell a joke", or "Sing a few lyrics from your favorite song".

Tip: you can also use cards from the existing Scrum Mythbusters Series and Myth or Fact Scrum Coaching Cards, or the GoRetro Icebreaker Generator.

Last, prepare a poster with the rules of the "game", so you don't have to repeat yourself during the game.

Instructions and flow of the game

Gather topics and ideas (5')

After a quick check-in or warm-up, I like to start the session like any other old-fashioned retrospective by asking the team to write down as many post-its as they can within five minutes without revealing what we are going to do.

You can use a variety of ways to collect this data. I've run this session using the well-known formats Plus, Delta, Start, Stop Continue, Mad, Sad, Glad, and 4L's.

When everyone is done writing and/or the timebox has expired, explain that we will do it a bit differently than we are used to. Instead of looking at the collected ideas and grouping them, we are going to play a little game!

Explain what we are going to do (5')

This is the moment when I reveal the game board and explain what we are about to do.

How to play

1. Roll the dice.
2. Move your pawn to a space on the board.
3. Perform the task associated with the space on the board within a timebox of 5 minutes.
4. Continue to the next person.

Rules

• The current player is acting as a facilitator/conversation driver.
• Each turn/task takes no more than 5 minutes.
• If a task was not yet completed when the timebox ends, the next player could choose to continue this task by moving its pawn to the same space on the board instead of throwing the dice.
• If no ideas are left to choose, try to think of anything else that might help us improve as a team. Enjoy the awkward silence; this might take some time ;-)
• The Scrum Master can always improve these rules while playing.

Tasks

• IMPROVE - Choose from any of the ideas on the board, or come up with a new idea that might help us improve. Make sure the whole team understands the point and together come up with an actionable next step.
• FEEDBACK - Explain to the team your weakest point during the last Sprint, or ask if anyone has feedback for you. Is there anything you can do to prevent this from happening again? Be honest and respectful!
• THANKFUL - Say thanks to a team member, explaining the concrete facts you are grateful for. The same timebox applies; depending on the task, you can finish early.
• CHALLENGE - Take a challenge card, perform the task, or answer the question. The same timebox applies; depending on the task, you can finish early.

So, is everything clear, or are there any questions?

How can you win the game?

A question I've been asked during almost all sessions is, "how can we win the game?". I must admit that I don't have a real answer. The goal of the game is like any other retrospective. To come up with ideas on how we as a team can improve ourselves. And I have the feeling that adding any rewards to the game might negatively impact this outcome. So I answered by stating that I did not have an idea yet and would love to hear their thoughts after or during the session.

After playing for a few rounds, all teams had forgotten about winning the game and never asked it again ??.

Play the game! (45+')

Then decide on the order in which people will throw the dice and start playing.

I've done this format in sessions ranging from 60 to 120 minutes. Most teams I've played with ran out of time before they could come up with actionable next steps for all their challenges. I stopped the game about 5-10 minutes before the end of the session in order to do a little debrief and wrap up the session.

Debrief (5+')

I encourage you to ask the team what they thought of the format and what it made possible. And of course, if they would like to play it again in the future.

All teams I played with were able to see the benefits of structuring a session like this, but not everyone liked the format.

Some things that this format makes possible are:

• It adds a little fun, and it's different than what everyone is used to, causing more people to be engaged.
• Participation is distributed among the whole team, also causing more people to be engaged.
• Everybody will practice facilitating a conversation, which will make it easier for the Scrum Master to take a step back.
• Everybody gets at least one turn to address what they think is most important.
• The short timebox prevents discussions from dragging on too long. People might choose to continue the conversation, but that decision is given to another person every five minutes. Some people in my session called it a build-in ELMO.
• Coming up with concrete action points is hard. The very short timeboxes made it easier for the team to think about small first steps - sometimes called 15% solutions. Instead of overthinking the problem and trying to solve it in one go. All teams had more actionable items at the end of the session.

What's next?

Most teams I played with loved this retrospective format, so I will keep playing and improving it.

One last tip! You can make the game even simpler by using a single die where each side corresponds to a task. Throw the dice, and follow the same rules. Or, when you are online or own a physical wheel of fortune, use the WheelOfNames.

Let me know if you give it a try or have suggestions on how to improve it!