As a Scrum Master or generally as a moderator of a retrospective, you are faced with the great challenge, again and again to develop new retrospective methodsthat fit the teams and that noticeably help the teams to develop. 

In the best case, you even create the surprise effect and use an interactive and creative method to tease out something that was previously not visible. That is not always easy!

As a Spin-off of the psychological faculty of the University of Münster we are developing a software tool that supports Scrum Master in retros & #8211; among other things to remedy this situation. We focus on making Scrum masters more psychological know-how available. We want to develop a Retromat & #8211; with methods from psychology.

With our tool you can get anonymous feedback from your team on specific statements or items (eg "I have the freedom to do my work efficiently.") And open questions ("What has slowed you down lately?"), their results then automatically for the retro in a full workshop be processed using our tool. These statements are not just accidental ideas. Christian, our psychologist on the team, has Research results with several hundred thousand participants thinned to identify behavioral anchors that make truly successful teams.

Based on this, we have put together a general item pool of over 90 statements. So that you can use it specifically, we want to give you some specific combinations of items & #8211; including exercises & #8211; imagine the to concrete core challenges from teams.

Below you will find three corresponding retrospective methods of Echometer. They will really take you further!

Retrospective methods: retro workshops with Echometer

1. Better teamwork through team goals

There is hardly a technique in psychology that is more suitable to provide more motivation: good goals. In some companies it is still common to say: “Do your best.” It is proven: Specific, ambitious goals almost always lead to higher performance.

Click hereto find the right workshop format.

2. With mental models for better communication in the team

People look at the world from different filters. If you looked at a picture, many would look at it from different angles & #8211; and talk about it differently. Depending on the filter. And that is exactly why communication often goes wrong. What to do?

Here & #8217; s goes to the workshopthat will help you build a common & #8222; mental model & #8220; to develop.

3. Question assumptions & start thinking outside the box

Teams tend to only incrementally improve at some point. And that's good for now. But at the same time you sometimes have familiar behaviors with which you have come to terms. Here it is difficult to break out of the rut. Then it's time for a workshop that opens your eyes and encourages lateral thinking.

This workshop will help you to re-examine implicit assumptions about your own work!

4. Try Echometer some day

Another method for your retro are of course Retro Tools – why not use what's there?

In particular, I want to mention the retrospective tool Echometer that I myself helped to develop. It combines insights from psychology with agile best practices to get the best out of team health checks & fun retrospectives - to help to grow your team. 

We have a whole database of Retro Methods – and it can be used online as well as offline.

The basic version is free. If you want to try it out – right here or start for free.

What do you think about our retrospective methods?

We hope that at least one of these workshops fits your team's current challenges. If not, we look forward to your feedback on the challenge we can help with.