Halloween Retrospective Template - Spooky Sprint! Retrospective

How to conduct this activity

You can divide your Halloween Retrospective Template - Spooky Sprint into 5 stages. Here are them: 1 - Halloween Treats! Set The Scene: Ask your team to come up with a Halloween treat that best describes how the sprint went. This can be any piece of Halloween chocolate, sweets, or confectionery. Example: Tangfastics - The sprint has been generally productive and enjoyable, but the build issues that we have encountered during the sprint have left a really sour taste in my mouth! Give the team a few moments to think of one each, then get them to add this information to this column. Then, go round the team one by one and get them to explain their Halloween treat and why the sprint relates to that. 2 - Ghost Stories! Gather Data: Now we know how the team feels following the sprint, it's time to think about why. To do this, ask each team member to come up with a short ghost story and add this to this column. This story can have a happy or a scary (sad) ending but should cover the events that went on during the sprint. Try to encourage the team by making it fun along the way! Once each team member has their ghost story ready, get them one by one to tell it to the team! 3 - Trick or Treat! Generate Insights: In this stage, ask each team member to add to this column two ideas: One to improve the team by as little as 1%, and one to eradicate an issue. These ideas should flow from the discussion in the earlier activities. For example, a Treat may be: Let's start estimating using relative story points. And a Trick may be: Leaving testing to the end of the sprint is causing us so many issues. Let's try doing this as we develop each story. Once the team has come up with ideas, ask them to explain each point. At this point, the discussion should be allowed to flow. And the ScrumMaster (or whoever is running the retrospective) should be helping the team to capture the ideas being raised. 4 - Pick a Door! Decide What to Do: Now that the team has come up with an abundance of ideas, try to group the ones that are the same (or very similar). You can do that by merging/moving the cards. The team will now have several options to choose from to improve. Get the team to imagine the scenario that they are out Trick or Treating and only have time to visit three more houses (allow 3 votes per participant). They can choose to visit three separate ones, the same one three times, or one house once, and another one twice. The team member cannot visit their own house (idea). Get the team to then put one dot per visit to the door that they wish to visit (they can do that by voting in the cards). For a team of 8 people, there should be 24 dots distributed across the doors. Count up the visits on each door. Pick the top 3. And there you have your 3 improvements to take forward into the next sprint, as decided by the team. 5 - Spook of the Sprint! Close Retrospective: At this stage, you can play a little game. Ask each team member to add a card in this column to thank one team member for something they have done during the sprint. After that, allow people to vote. Total up the votes and see who has the most votes. And there you go, you have now a Spook of the Sprint! Celebrate with a round of applause, or the presentation of a team mascot to have on their desk for the next sprint. Try this to end the retrospective. It's amazing how good people feel as a result of it!