Replaying the Game – Retrospective

What if we take a look at fun retrospectives based on popular themes? Let’s replay the game. This retrospective offers an entertaining format that should delight participants, especially during football events. It might pique your interest if you’re looking to change up your retrospective formats.

Feel free to check out our other retrospectives on this dedicated page:

Our Retrospectives

Materials Needed for Replaying the Game

For this retrospective, specific materials are required:

• A large sheet of paperboard (or a whiteboard).
• Tip: Draw the field and all its elements beforehand.

The overall time required for this retrospective is 30 minutes.

Process

In this retrospective, the facilitator will explain the context:

“It’s halftime in the game, and the team is heading back to the locker room. The team and the coach will take this opportunity to review what needs improvement to secure a victory in the game.”

Agilists who are fans of this sport will quickly recognize the connection between this exchange and the continuous improvement that the team, as a whole, must bring about.

Preparation

The facilitator will draw a football field with players:

Next, the facilitator will explain all the elements of this field:

• Our team on the left: What are our strengths?
• The opposing team on the right: What’s slowing us down?
• The opposing team’s goal: The sprint goal (to be noted on a sticky note before starting step 1).
• The scoreboard: What’s the result of the game?
• The locker room: What improvements need to be made?

Step 1

The facilitator will give the participants 5 minutes to prepare sticky notes addressing the three main ideas:

• What are our strengths?
• What’s slowing us down?
• What improvements need to be made?

During these 5 minutes, they must also assign a score to the first half of this game (the ending sprint). They cannot score more than a total of 5 goals in this regard, for example, 2-3, 2-2, 5-0 (the first number represents our team).

Duration: 5 minutes

Step 2

Each team member will come forward to place their sticky notes and explain in more detail what they’ve written on each sticky note. This will be a moment of exchange among all participants.

Duration: 20 minutes

Step 3

The Scrum Master will then suggest conducting a dot voting to vote on the three most important improvement areas that need to be implemented at the beginning of the next sprint.

The Scrum Master will not forget to ask participants to choose a volunteer to be responsible for implementing each improvement area.

Duration: 5 minutes

Conclusion: Replaying the Game

This “Replaying the Game” retrospective, which we see happening in some teams, is very original. It allows for a playful format while striving for a concrete goal: improvement.