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Virtual Icebreakers For Remote Teams

If you’re looking for a fun way to start a meeting, try any of the following icebreaker questions (listed in no particular order):

  1. What was a favorite moment of [insert any time frame]?
  2. What was your first job?
  3. What is your favorite food? Drink?
  4. Where is your favorite place to go on vacation?
  5. What is your favorite smell?
  6. Do you have any pets?
  7. What is your favorite color?
  8. Show your home on google maps and describe your environment: do you live near the city center? A park? A climbing gym? (courtesy of Morgan Legge)
  9. What is your favorite movie?
  10. Do you have a favorite music group, era or album?
  11. When I dance I look like _______.
  12. Share a favorite memory that includes food (courtesy of Sarah Baca)
  13. What is the story of your name? (courtesy of Dr. Clue)
  14. Take a picture from your window and have people guess where you are.
  15. Show any picture from your life and tell the story behind it.
  16. What does the weather look like where you are? (pro tip: use pictures for more fun)
  17. What is your favorite comic strip?
  18. Create a video tour of your house. Each person on the team creates a short video tour of where they live.
  19. Try the “Never have I…” game (but remember to keep it PG and work-related ;).
  20. Share a tour of your hometown via YouTube video (for example, on the Management 3.0 team there are people from Regina, Nuland, Espoo, and Colorado Springs).
  21. Present your hobby.
  22. Get inspired by Meeting Spicer by Dov Tsol
  23. What’s on your bucket list?
  24. Collect everyone’s baby pictures and try to guess who’s who
  25. Ask everyone to draw a picture of _______ – and then share their versions with the group.
  26. Throwback time – ask everyone to bring a picture of themselves from X number of years ago.
  27. “Two truths and a lie”: ask everyone on the team to write down two true statements and one false statement and give them to one person. That person then reads out the statements and the team guesses whose they are – and then tries to guess which statement is false.
  28. Learn each other’s language. For example, during every meeting, learn 1 new word.
  29. Take a picture of your shoes. Do your virtual colleagues wear flip-flops, shoes, slippers, go barefoot?

Original article can be found here: https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/44-icebreakers-for-virtual-teams/

Ice_Breaker.01Download
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Refreshing Your Retrospective With Story Cubes and Liberating Structures

Original, post can be found here: https://dzone.com/articles/using-story-cubes-and-liberating-structures-combo

How to Do a Story Cube Retrospection

Things You May Need 

  • A whiteboard
  • Markers
  • 9 cubes from the story cube set.
  • Sticky notes for “1-2-4-All.”

Preparation

Create three columns on the board, like “Happy,” “Sad,” and “Action.”

Let the team roll the dice and pick them up one at a time. Every dice will have an image on the surface. Let the team members talk about the experience from sprint which comes to their mind while looking at the image. Make a note on either the “Happy” or “Sad” list. Repeat this activity for all of the dice.

Now against each happy or sad item, have the team dot vote on what they want to pick up to improve for the next sprint (my recommendation is to pick just one or maximum two, depending on your timebox).

Now for every item that is selected run a “1-2-4-All” session.

How to Run a “1-2-4-All” Session

Let the team members brainstorm over the topic individually and make notes on a sticky note for a full minute. Repeat the same activity in pairs (exchange the ideas in a brief manner) for no more than two minutes.

Repeat the same activity in quartets for four minutes, and do it one final time with the entire group sharing and noting the most suitable solutions around the topic for five minutes.

 Note: you can customize the repetition based on your group size.

Once you have run the 1-2-4-All for the selected item, you will have solid actionable items derived by the team to conclude the sprint retrospective.

More ideas can be found here:

https://www.infoq.com/news/2015/05/story-cubes/
https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/rory-cubes-sprint-retrospective
https://medium.com/@dymissy/effective-retrospective-with-rorys-story-cubes-72da2d389144

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Throw the Cat.. and other objects

I copied this exercise from: https://www.tastycupcakes.org/2016/05/throw-the-cat-and-other-objects/

Timing: 10 minutes preparation, 15 minutes to run then as long as you need to debrief

Materials:

Stickies, Pens and a list of objects

Instructions:

I’ve started using this as a variation on the https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2014/may/title-teaching-relative-estimation-by-throwing-a-c example by Tomasz de Jastrzebiec Wykowski.

The basics of it involve getting the team to discuss the relative estimation of achieving a task. I’ve found this really useful for new members to the team to understand that a 13 for one team may not be a 13 for another, not due to ability but rather it all being relative to previous works done.

  1. On a wall add to sets of estimation counting, anything you like… in this case I used Story Points and T shirt sizes, so one board is the points the other is shirts
  2. Split the team in to two
  3. give each an identical pack of items, don’t look at the yet.
  4. Scenario – each object must be thrown at least one meter
  5. Place the objects on the boards using relative estimation for difficulty

I purposely selected an ambiguous set of objects, which if the team ask for clarification I’ll answer.

So this is what we went for..

  • Cat – will it just let you? will it fight back
  • Ball – it is actually a medicine ball… I just don’t specify
  • Feather
  • Rose
  • Trumpet
  • Pizza
  • Jaguar – worse than a cat… but actually the car
  • Sheet of paper – can you scrunch it? make a plane? again don’t specify
  • Stone – from Stone Henge, again don’t specify
  • Bat – Vampire kind

The actual cards are one word and ambigious

ExamplesDownload

Learning Points:

The purpose is to get discussion going and realise that there is no correct answer, By using 2 different measurements you can see first of all what one group thinks then how it relates.

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How to do a fun and insightful last Sprint Retrospective of the year?

Erik Stoffer facilitated a retrospective to look back at last year by drawing a timeline to share insights, learnings and experiences. They directly looked forward what to expect in the first part of 2020 by visualizing this.

1️⃣ [5 min] Set the stage: Creating a soft-landing after the Sprint Review by discussing the Sprint Review feedback. And sharing that we are going to look back on the year behind us because it is the last Sprint Retrospective of the year.

2️⃣ [5 min] Check-in: Question “If the last sprint (two weeks) was a season – what would it be, and why?” We did a round (popcorn-style) of approx. 1 minute each.

Looking back ⏮

3️⃣[5 min to draw, 8 min for feedback] Collect input: Grab an empty paper and draw a timeline of how you experienced last year with the team (think of successes, failures, go-lives, process changes, team changes, events, trainings, conferences, etc.) Everyone presented his / her drawing with a short voice-over.

4️⃣ [2 min, 5 min for feedback] Discover learnings: Populate your timeline with things you learned by using “dot voting” sticker. Everyone presented his / her learnings with a short voice-over.

Looking forward ⏭

5️⃣ [5 min to draw, 8 min for feedback] Collect input: Grab an empty paper and visualize how you expect the first part of the year could look like (taking the learnings, team goals and personal goals into account). I invited everyone to only focus on the first 3 to 6 months of the year. After visualizing this, everyone presented his / her drawing with a short voice-over.

6️⃣ [5 min] Closing: To close the retrospective everyone ended with: “One word on how you are feeling about the next year”.

Debriefing:

Everyone in the team had the chance to retrospect and share on how they experienced the year with the team. Funny fact: some shared experiences of a few months ago which already were forgotten by other team members. 

It was challenging but insightful to already share the expectations for the first part of next year on team-  and personal level. This way we were able to create a shared expectation on the first part of 2020. And this was also an opportunity to sync on the team goals and ask help on personal goals from each other.

💭 Next time I think I will experiment with adding one more step, by inviting the team members – after drawing their version of next year between step 5 and 6 – to draw next year together so we can hang this at the team spot.

If you have other ideas or insights on this Retrospective, please drop a message below. Or if you do this retrospective with your own team, please let me know your feedback 🙂

Used materials:

📑 Flip over with the agenda

⌚️ Time Timer (for timeboxing)

⬜️ Empty paper (A4 format)

✏️ Markers, Sharpies

🔴 “dot voting” stickers

Scrum on!

P.s. he bumped into this blog of Sam Laing, which was what inspired him to design the retrospective as described above. Originally posted here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-do-fun-insightful-last-sprint-retrospective-year-erik-stoffer/