7 Fun Agile Retrospective Ideas & Icebreaker's for Easter

Agile Coaches, Scrum Masters & Co. like creative ideas for retrospectives. Using varied questions in creative retro formats, teams often come up with new ideas and find the retrospective to be more fun.

That’s why you shouldn’t skip the seasonal Easter occasion to escape the standard retro formats a little. At least that’s what Andreas and I thought this morning during our coffee chat. So we developed ideas on how Easter bunnies, egg hunt and surprise eggs can be meaningfully combined with the classic reflection questions of a retro.

Here are our results - have fun trying them out in your next Easter retrospectives!

Easter Retro Icebreaker to start your retro

Let’s start with a few appropriate Icebreaker questions or check-ins that will help set the stage for an effective retro in Easter retrospectives. Of course, you can also modify our suggestions or add images to your retro board.

You can ask the following questions of your team members to introduce the workshop in an interactive, atmospheric and fun way in the spirit of an Easter retro. These ones have a focus on introducing the reflection of the last weeks.

Easter icebreaker to reflect on the last few weeks

• If we are the Easter Bunny and our job is to deliver eggs: Did we successfully deliver in the last sprint?
• If our last sprint was an Easter egg, what would it look like?
• If our last sprint were an Easter feast day, which would it be: Palm Sunday (the end of the long, difficult Lent), Good Friday (a day of mourning), or Easter Sunday (a festive holiday)?

Easter-Icebreakers to get to know the team

The following Icebreaker questions or check-ins have a focus on getting to know the team better in a fun way. 

• What’s your favorite (or most embarrassing) memory of Easter?
• What is your favorite way to eat (Easter) eggs?
• What’s your record for eggs eaten over Easter?
• What’s your favorite Easter tradition?
• What’s your favorite thing to eat at a good (Easter) breakfast?
• What will you be doing this Easter weekend?

As I said, feel free to modify these Icebreaker questions to your taste and to fit your team.

Easter Retro Methods & Ideas for “Data Gathering”

After you have initiated the meeting in a fun way, it’s time to ask the right retrospective questions to review the sprint holistically. The following 4 retrospective ideas can help you with this. Again, feel free to pick individual questions, stories, and ideas and adapt them to your team.

Scandal! The international Easter Bunny team did not deliver the eggs on time. It apparently didn’t sprint fast enough. Were we being manipulated, or was it up to us? Let’s find out, in this Easter retrospective with some creative food for thought.

Easter Conspiracy Retro

We are the Easter Bunny team. What didn't go optimally with the delivery of the Easter eggs?

What positively and negatively influenced our Easter egg delivery?

How can we make the delivery process smoother next time?

Open this retro now

Easter eggs come in a variety of shapes and (at least the toy eggs) can sometimes provide a surprise. Just like your last Scrum Sprint. If all the tasks and events of the last weeks were Easter eggs, how would you reflect on your last sprint?

Easter Egg Retro

Which Easter egg surprised you in the last few weeks?

Which Easter egg did you particularly enjoy?

Which Easter egg didn't agree with you so well?

Which team member would you like to give a real Easter egg to and why?

Open this retro now

The Easter Bunny team must deliver quickly and accurately to satisfy all consumers. Just like you.

Easter Delivery Retro

What helped us, the Easter Bunny team, deliver quickly?

What slowed us down?

How can we better support each other next time?

Open this retro now

We are in the Easter Bunny’s factory. You are scientists and have the following goal: to develop egg products that make customers happy. You are just at the beginning of the experiment and have experimented with three known materials - which have yielded very different results.

Easter Egg Factory Retro

We are the Easter Bunny factory and delivered different eggs, for example chocolate eggs: Which increment from our last sprint was really well received?

Plastic eggs: Which increment from our last sprint looked better than it tasted?

Scrambled eggs: Which egg did we drop in the last sprint?

Open this retro now

Visual Easter Retro Icebreaker for fun Check-Ins

So, you already have some icebreaker or check-in questions as well as some retro methods for “collecting data” in the retro. However, we would like to give you a few more visual icebreakers that you can use with our Echometer Retro Board, for example. Just click on the green button to get started 🙂

Duration: 5-15 minutes | Goal: Setting the stage

Idea: Which of the images shown on the online whiteboard best conveys our sprint results from your personal point of view? Everyone in the team positions themselves and explains the answer.

5. Facilitation instructions in detail

One of the rather quick retrospective games :

1. You give the instructions.
2. 1-2 minute time slot: Everyone chooses an image from the given view (see whiteboard screenshot) or uploads their own image if wanted. Double-click to create a whiteboard sticky, which you drag onto the image to position yourself.
3. The person who was the first to make a decision begins to explain their choice and hands over to the next person until everyone gave feedback.

Duration: 5-15 minutes | Goal: Setting the stage

Idea: Which of the Easter eggs shown on the online whiteboard (with very different emotions) best conveys your attitude towards our sprint results? Everyone in the team positions themselves and explains the answer.

6. Detailed facilitation instructions

One of the rather quick retrospective games :

1. You give the instructions.
2. 1-2 minute time slot: Everyone chooses an egg from the given whiteboard image (see above) based on your instructions. Double-click to create a whiteboard sticky, which you drag onto the Easter egg to position yourself.
3. The person who was the first to make a decision begins to explain their choice and hands over to the next person until everyone gave feedback.

Duration: 5-15 minutes | Goal: Setting the stage

Idea: In this retro game, you don’t go straight into reflecting on the last sprint. Rather, the goal is to use a few jokes and small riddles to get the team to start the retro with a smile. Attention: Some jokes only work in English.

7. Detailed facilitation instructions

One of the rather quick retrospective games . You can (or should) adapt it to your team. This is what the game can look like:

1. You read one of the puzzles (see screenshot of the Echometer whiteboard above). 
2. Now each team member may openly call out to the round if they have any ideas for how to solve the riddles or jokes. 
3. The person who guesses the most riddles wins the game.

Don’t forget: The most important goal of this game is to get the team out of their daily routine and make them laugh before moving on to reflecting on the last few weeks or the last Scrum Sprint.

By the way, this is Christian, my co-founder (psychologist). He comments on some of the retrospective ideas in this blog post (in English) - feel free to check it out 😄.

Seasonal Easter retrospective ideas to stimulate creativity: 1 more tip

If you already use Echometer, you can easily add the Easter questions to the survey for the next retro and save the check-in in the retro preparation. The survey in advance of the retro gives your team members enough time to think about it in peace before the retro. This way, you can be sure that your retro will bring many creative perspectives to light!

If you are not yet familiar with Echometer, you should take a look at our website and get to know the advantages of Echometer.

Learn more about Echometer

For managers: developing team members in 1-to-1 meetings

Many managers conduct regular one-on-one meetings with their employees - but don’t get everything out of the discussions. This meeting routine - in addition to agile retrospectives - is of course also suitable for further developing teams.

I would therefore like to take this opportunity to draw your attention to our 1:1 meeting tool Echometer (see website). It combines short Health Check surveys with an AI assistant that makes employee development much easier.

The following template will give you a feel for what kind of questions you can reflect on and measure with Echometer in your 1-to-1 meetings. Try it out using the button without login:

⁉️ Mood check (agreement from 1-7): Personal development

• "My work tasks usually progress very quickly, even if external feedback is necessary."
• "When I observe suboptimal behavior, I know how to constructively point it out to colleagues."
• "I receive constructive feedback on both my work and my personal development."
• "I see an attractive career path ahead of me in the company." #Growth
• "In the last few weeks, I have very often been able to use my strengths at work."

This is what this survey looks like in Echometer:

Open template in 1:1 tool

Conclusion - Good Retrospective Methods

Team development is a complex matter for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches and managers. If you would like a few more varied questions for your retrospectives, take a look at our post on 50+ fresh retrospective methods for beginners and professionals (including the Mario Kart Retro, Marathon Retro and the Agile Delivery Retro).

"Many team members are afraid to speak up!"

Solve this challenge

"We discover too many unexpected issues & bugs at a late stage!"

Solve this challenge

"Why does it sometimes take me hours to prepare a simple retrospective?"

Solve this challenge