3 ideas for retro formats

3 fresh retrospective Ideas to kill "Retro-Fatigue"

Your team has now held the Sailing Boat Retro for the third time and the retro format is no longer as exciting as it was at first? The team is getting a little tired and no longer engaged in retrospectives?

No problem. At Echometer we regularly research and brainstorm new retro formats for our users and this time we share three of our latest templates with you too.

Retro Idea 1: The Battery Retro 🔋

Do you have the feeling that your team has a low energy level? Then this format is just the right thing to reflect with the team on the charge status of your personal batteries.
  • What is the current charge status of your personal battery in percent?
  • What has been draining your battery lately?
  • What has been charging your battery lately?
  • What would help you to save energy in the next few weeks?

If you like this retro format and questions, you can open them directly in our team development tool Echometer:

How to open the retro method in the Echometer tool: Just click on the button below, invite your team and get started – no login necessary 🙂

Retro Idea 2: The Tree Retro 🌳

Beautiful metaphors for retro formats can often be found in nature. Here is a suggestion on how this can work very simply with a tree:
  • 🌳 What is our strong tribe that keeps us together as a team?
  • 🪵 What are rotten branches (patterns or routines) that we should get rid of?
  • 🌱 What are new buds we should grow?

If you like this retro format and questions, you can open them directly in our team development tool Echometer:

Retro Idea 3: The Gardeners Retro 🚜

Let's stay on the green side. Here is another retro format that should be suitable for nature lovers:

  • 🌱 What seeds were sown? (new started topics)
  • 🌾 What has already been harvested? (milestones or goals already achieved)
  • 🐞 Which bugs did we have to be careful of? (potential hazards)
  • 🌪 How has the weather affected our harvest?🌪 (external factors that are not under our control)

If you like this retro format and questions, you can open them directly in our team development tool Echometer:

Creative retro formats on click

If you are searching for fun retrospective ideas, check out our post on 54 Kickass Retrospective Ideas for Agile Teams (including the Mario Kart Retro & the Team Morale Health Check).

It is worth getting creative with the questions in the retrospective in order to make the retrospectives varied and to promote the team's change of perspective.

With Echometer it's very easy. In addition, in Echometer you get better insights into team development via the continuous team health check and you can finally make developments measurable. Just try it out:

Have you had good experiences with other creative retro formats? Then write to us ideas@echometerapp.com.

We look forward to hearing about your experiences and suggestions!

At last, one of the most effective ways to sustainably develop the agile mindset of teams is implementing an agile health check. Our free team health check kit is there to help you implement it and ask the right questions. Just takes a minute to go through it 🙂

Most Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters run in circles...

...fixing superficial symptoms. Time to use psychology to foster sustainable mindset change.

"Many team members are afraid to speak up!"

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

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

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Echometer is the smartest way to improve the team's delivery for busy team leads

The tool combines agile health checks, action item tracking and interactive, psychology-based retrospectives on autopilot.

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