Day at the movies templateThe goal of this retrospective is to open up honest conversation, without blame, while having fun.  It is intended to look at some of the Scrum Artifacts, Ceremonies and Roles and to discover where more attention needs to be paid.

Timing
90 minutes
Materials
Sets of cards with different movie titles and characters of movies/TV series.
White board marker to jot down the keywords the team is saying.
Extra cards to allow the team to add movie titles, if they cannot find an appropriate one.
Some popcorn to help with the movie theme.
Instructions
Check in:
Ask the participants to think back along the last month/sprint and about how they were experiencing things.  What they were feeling, observing and thinking.  Tell the participants to choose one card that will best describe that and on the count of one, two, three, ACTION, show the card.  Allow each participant to explain, if they want to, or to make an observation.
Reviewing Ceremonies, Artifacts and more:
40-50 minutes.
Tell the group that in the next exercise they will have a look at the Scrum Artifacts, Ceremonies and Roles.  Using the same format as for the Check In, ask the team to choose one card that best describes  how they are experiencing a role, ceremony, artifact or value (example Grooming).  Timebox the team to sixty seconds per choice.  Once they have revealed their cards, ask them to briefly share their thoughts about the reason for choosing the card.  Jot down some main notes about what the team says (some of it will be very quirky)  while the team discusses their cards.  It will become clear where more attention needs to be spent with the feedback the members give.
For our retrospective, I asked the team to review the following with their cards:
  • Focus on an individual level
  • Focus on a team level
  • Self-Organization
  • Sprint Review
  • Backlog
  • Backlog Grooming
  • Stakeholders
  • Deadline dates
I allowed for a ten minute break before we did the next step.
Decide what to do
Looking at everything noted on the board, you should have a clear view of where attention needs to be given.  Look at one or two of the most pressing things and allow the team to brainstorm about what they have noted.  I asked them to tell me possible causes and solutions and noted it on the whiteboard
ACTION!

After having brainstormed, tell the team to choose one/two (if the time allows) items, to create  a SMART Goal

on how to achieve what it is that they would like to change/do in the next sprint.
Attached, is a template with some of the movie/characters we used.