Tag: Exercices

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Retrospective board game ‘Golden Apples’

If you need some inspiration for a fun retrospective, take a look at this board game:

Inspired by Carmen Guerra Jurado her holiday in Greece, it has:

  • Greek gods and monsters(🦉🔱)
  • Death (☠️)
  • Lego (🧱)
  • Personal feedback questions (💌)
  • Team related questions (🎭)
  • Sprint related questions (🏃🏻‍♀️🏃🏼‍♂️) and, due to a lack of golden apples;
  • Gold chocolate coins(🍫🥇)

The teams enjoyed it and results were fruitful! (Pun intended.) The game itself still needs some tweaking. But Monopoly better watch its back! 😆

Copied from: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/carmen-guerra-jurado-b3156924_creativity-scrummaster-retrospective-activity-6582154931749339136-nGn7/

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Two Truths and a Lie

Each team member writes down 3 statements. 2 of them are true, 1 of them is not true. The statements must be about the person himself.

Examples:

  • I play the guitar
  • I speak 5 languages
  • I was picked up on an island
  • I’m a twin
  • I hate the color red

A person tells the 3 statements. The teammates may take turns guessing what is true and what is not.

More 2 Truths and a Lie ideas and examples can be found here: https://truthsandlie.com

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Building the Team Manifesto

The following text was copied from: https://www.scrum.nl/blog/building-team-manifesto/

Every time a new team is formed, it takes time to grow from a group of people to a well-functioning team. In their journey to become a high-performing team, they need a shared understanding of the principles and values of each individual and the team. The most important principles and values can be summarized in a team manifesto, a social contract among the team members. A team manifesto is always built by the team itself. It contains a set of norms, values and behaviors that forms a solid ground for collaboration within the team.

Building the Team Manifesto

With every team I coach, one of the first things we do is building a team manifesto. Recently, I did this by using the Retrospective format ‘That guy, this guy’. The results were great! Therefore, I would like to share this workshop format with you.

  1. Plan a timebox of 60 minutes with the entire team
  2. Bring flip charts, sticky notes and markers with you
  3. Create two flip charts with: ‘Don’t be that guy…’ and ‘This guy rocks!’
  4. Explain to the team what the goal of this session and a team manifesto is
  5. Ask the team members to write down characteristics associated with ‘that guy’ (the person that you don’t want in your team) and ‘this guy’ (the person that is a perfect team member) on sticky notes, individually and in silence
  6. Let the team members explain what they wrote down and collect the sticky notes on the flip charts
  7. Consider to cluster the characteristics, if there is a lot of overlap
  8. Ask the team members to prioritize the characteristics, by dot voting on the ones they value the most for the team (every team member gets five dots to divide among the items)
  9. Select the five to seven most important characteristics
  10. Divide the team in three groups and give each group a set of characteristics
  11. Ask the groups to describe what each characteristic means for the team
  12. Let each group explain what they wrote down and adjust this with the feedback from the other groups
  13. Summarize all parts of the team manifesto on one flip chart and invite each team member to commit to it, for example by writing down their signatures
  14. Make sure the team manifesto is visible at all times

A team manifesto ensures that the team coherence improves. It is a common understanding about the desired behavior within the team, and what it means for them to be a team. Since the team has ownership over the team manifesto, team members will behave according to it and encourage others to do the same.

Additional examples can be found here:

The Team Manifesto: the foundation every team needs
by Barry Overeem

How To Kickstart A Great Scrum Team (10 practical things to do)
by Christiaan Verwijs

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Retrospective: Do The Team Radar

Since it’s such a tried-and-true format, there are plenty of articles on the Team Radar, with advice and emphasis added based on the author’s position and involvement with teams. Christiaan Verwijs of The Liberators approaches the subject from a facilitation perspective with a Scrum Master-y stance in 2017’s Retrospective: Do the Team Radar, while Petra Wille’s 2019 article The Secret Weapon of Retrospectives – the Team Radar over on Mind the Product is clearly written from a product managerial perspective. Use the best of both for your team’s next (radar) retrospective.

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IDOARRT Meeting Design

IDOARRT is a simple tool to support you to lead an effective meeting or group process by setting out clear purpose, structure and goals at the very beginning. It aims to enable all participants to understand every aspect of the meeting or process, which creates the security of a common ground to start from. The acronym stands for Intention, Desired Outcome, Agenda, Rules, Roles and Responsibilities and Time.

Step 1:

Before the meeting/process, prepare a Flipchart / Slide outlining all the points of IDOARRT. See below:

Intention – What is the intention, or purpose, of the meeting? In other words, why have it?

Desired Outcome(s) – What specific outcomes should be achieved by the end of the meeting?

Agenda – What activities will the group go through, in what order, to move toward the desired outcome?

Roles – What roles or responsibilities need to be in place for the meeting to run smoothly? Who is facilitating, and who is participating? Who is documenting, and who is keeping track of the time? What do you expect of the participants?

Rules – What guidelines will be in place during the meeting? These could relate to agreed group norms. They could also relate to use of laptops/mobiles, or practical rules related to a space. Let the participants add rules to ensure that they have ownership of them.

Time – What is the expected time for the meeting, including breaks,and at what time will the meeting end?

Step 2:

At the beginning of the meeting, introduce the IDOARRT, going through point by point. Invite participants to ask questions or make suggestions for changes. Once the group is happy with the plan, go ahead with the rest of the meeting.