M&M Retrospective: A Sweet Way to Improve Your Team
Retrospectives are an essential part of agile teams. They allow team members to reflect on their work, celebrate their successes, identify their challenges, and plan improvements. But to prevent retrospectives from becoming boring, repetitive, and unproductive, it makes sense to bring variation into the regular meetings.
That’s why I want to introduce you to a fun and easy way to spice up your retrospective with M&Ms.
Yes, you heard right, M&M’s.
These colorful and delicious chocolate candies you can find in any supermarket. ▶️🔴🟢🔵🟡🟤
M\&M Retrospective Setup
What you need for the M\&M retrospective:
To conduct an M&M retrospective, you will need the following materials:
- A bag of M&Ms. You can choose any size, but make sure it has at least five different colors.
- A bowl. Pour the M&M’s into it and mix them well.
- A whiteboard or retro tool. With it you write down the questions and the answers for each color.
Of course, you can also do an M&M retro without M&M’s and just answer the questions. But with M&M’s, your team will be twice as engaged - promised!
M\&M Retrospective Process
How the M\&M retrospective works:
- At the beginning of the retro, assign a question to each M&M color. For example, you can use green for positive feedback, red for negative feedback, blue for suggestions, yellow for personal questions, and brown for random questions.
- Pack the M&Ms into the bowl and mix well.
- Start the retrospective by asking each team member to take an M&M from the bowl without looking.
- Each team member can now answer the question that corresponds to the color of the M&M drawn. For example, if a red M&M was drawn, the person would have to give “negative” feedback.
- Continue this process until everyone has answered at least one question or until time runs out.
M\&M Retrospective Examples + Template
Example questions for the M\&M retro:
The special thing about the M&M Retrospective is that a rough framework is given, but the specific question is not fixed.
For example, if someone draws a green M&M, positive feedback should be given. Example questions would be:
- What features have we developed that we are proud of?
- Which team member do you want to give special thanks to in this sprint?
- What did you learn from someone on the team?
However, in our retro template, for the sake of simplicity, I have always written down only one question, which can be replaced at will:
DAKI Retro: How the retro works
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Random Icebreaker (2-5 minutes)
Echometer provides you with a generator for random check-in questions.
-
Review of open actions (2-5 minutes)
Before starting with new topics, you should talk about what has become of the measures from past retrospectives to check their effectiveness. Echometer automatically lists all open action items from past retros.
-
Discuss retro topics
Use the following open questions to collect your most important findings. First, everyone does it themselves, covered. Echometer allows you to reveal each column of the retro board individually in order to then present and group the feedback.
- Green (positive feedback): Who did a great job in this sprint?
- Red (negative feedback): What mistake did we make?
- Blue (suggestions): What can we improve next time?
- Yellow (personal question): How do you find peace on a stressful day?
- Brown (random question): If you won the lottery, what would you do?
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Catch-all question (Recommended)
So that other topics also have a place:
- What else would you like to talk about in the retro?
-
Prioritization / Voting (5 minutes)
On the retro board in Echometer, you can easily prioritize the feedback with voting. The voting is of course anonymous.
-
Define actions (10-20 minutes)
You can create a linked action via the plus symbol on a feedback. Not sure which measure would be the right one? Then open a whiteboard on the topic via the plus symbol instead to brainstorm root causes and possible measures.
-
Checkout / Closing (5 minutes)
Echometer enables you to collect anonymous feedback from the team on how helpful the retro was. This creates the ROTI score ("Return On Time Invested"), which you can track over time.
DAKI Retro
**
**Tips for a lighter retro🔍
Here are some little tips to make the M&M retrospective go by more easily:
- Use the “5 Whys” technique to get to the bottom of the problems. For example, if someone says they were stressed because of a deadline, ask them why that deadline was so tight, why they couldn’t get their tasks done sooner, why they didn’t ask for help, etc.
- Prioritize improvement actions based on their impact and feasibility. For example, if someone suggests that you should do more code reviews, ask them how much time and effort that would take, how much quality that would improve, and how you could implement it.
- Close the retrospective with a round of feedback. Ask each team member to share what they liked about the retrospective, what they didn’t like, and what they would like to change.
Conclusion - M&M Retrospective 🔴🟢🔵🟡🟤
I don’t know about you, but for me, the M&M retrospective is a creative way to wrap up a sprint and approach the upcoming sprint in a good mood.
If you like the M&M retrospective, you’ll probably like this, too: 26 Retrospectives for Beginners and Professionals.
Do you want to start your first M&M retrospective right away? Then try our Echometer tool for continuous improvement of agile teams:
DAKI Retro: How the retro works
-
Random Icebreaker (2-5 minutes)
Echometer provides you with a generator for random check-in questions.
-
Review of open actions (2-5 minutes)
Before starting with new topics, you should talk about what has become of the measures from past retrospectives to check their effectiveness. Echometer automatically lists all open action items from past retros.
-
Discuss retro topics
Use the following open questions to collect your most important findings. First, everyone does it themselves, covered. Echometer allows you to reveal each column of the retro board individually in order to then present and group the feedback.
- Green (positive feedback): Who did a great job in this sprint?
- Red (negative feedback): What mistake did we make?
- Blue (suggestions): What can we improve next time?
- Yellow (personal question): How do you find peace on a stressful day?
- Brown (random question): If you won the lottery, what would you do?
-
Catch-all question (Recommended)
So that other topics also have a place:
- What else would you like to talk about in the retro?
-
Prioritization / Voting (5 minutes)
On the retro board in Echometer, you can easily prioritize the feedback with voting. The voting is of course anonymous.
-
Define actions (10-20 minutes)
You can create a linked action via the plus symbol on a feedback. Not sure which measure would be the right one? Then open a whiteboard on the topic via the plus symbol instead to brainstorm root causes and possible measures.
-
Checkout / Closing (5 minutes)
Echometer enables you to collect anonymous feedback from the team on how helpful the retro was. This creates the ROTI score ("Return On Time Invested"), which you can track over time.
DAKI Retro
