Pictionary Retrospective

Pictionary Retrospective

A common issue with retrospective meetings has been the tendency for formats to go stale and be over repeated. Another observation that I’ve had is that the loudest members of a team tend to drive the entirety of the conversation. To help alleviate these issues, I’ve designed a new retrospective format to better engage teams.

To start this retro, give each team member a pad of sticky notes and a sharpie, then instruct them to anonymously write a positive and a negative about the past sprint. Once each team member has finished writing, inform them that they’ll be drawing what they each wrote, and the other team members will be guessing as if they were playing Pictionary. The team should aim for their guesses to be within the scope of the previous sprint.

The Scrum Master should take note of the what the player is drawing before they start and then record every guess for that topic as the game progresses. If the team immediately gets the answer, then they all closely aligned on what is being drawn. If they team don't, they will have generated several new points to discuss later in the exercise.

Once every team member has drawn twice on the whiteboard, begin analyzing each guess that was made during the sprint. If a guess was made that was not actually true the events the sprint, discuss why it was not an issue with the team. These “garbage” guesses, in my experience, generate some of the best conversation within teams.

Goal	Get the pros and cons of a sprint as well as a brain dump of each participant
Required Materials	Sticky notes/index cards, pens/sharpies, and a whiteboard
Minimum Participants	3