It's not easy. By this, I mean that it's not easy to find interactive, fun and, at the same time, value-adding retrospective methods which you carry out remotely within your team.

Escape your daily routine 

In my opinion as a scrum master and psychologist, the retrospective methods that can bring team members out of their everyday life are particularly valuable. This lets them see things from a different perspective. 

This is why I have summarized 4 remote retrospective methods here. The 4 ideas here are a little different, a little unusual, but also work in a remote context. 

Remote Retrospective Method 1: Skribbl

The following retrospective method is particularly suitable if you want to have a fun, interactive check-in. This is a check-in that prepares your mindset for the rest of the retrospective.

Most of you will know of this game, but probably not in this remote context yet.

Skribbl is about guessing what others are drawing. That means someone from the team gets a term - for example “Sprint”. He is the only one (possibly apart from the Scrum Master) who knows this term, and now has to draw it as well as they possiblly can. 

Things have to be drawn - for example “sprint”. However, the rest of the team/players don't know what the term given was, and have to guess what it is, based on the drawing. This often gives rise to a few creative ideas - and, of course, laughs too!

Here's what you need to do.

1. Visit Skribbl.io.
2. Create a private room. This is shown at the bottom of the following screenshot. 

A private room means that only you and your team are in, and no other online player can join.
Don't forget to fill in your name and choose the right language.

1. Next, you will get to the lobby. Here you can set the number of rounds, the language and the time given for each drawing. These options are all on the left side of the following screenshot.

Most importantly: You can also enter your own words to be drawn, so that this remote retrospective method really prepares for your last sprint!

For example, you could have the words “Sprint”, “Customer”, “Daily”, “Product” or “Johannes” (a team member) drawn. Depending on which area you want to get the team ready for, in the rest of the remote retrospective. 

You can enter the terms you want to use in the field below and tick the box that comes after it, so that the game only uses words that you have entered. 

It is important that you arrange the terms (as described in the field below) with a comma after each one, enter at least four terms and the words have a maximum of 30 characters.

1. Next, it's time to share your room with other team members. You have to copy the link to your room at the bottom of the screen (at the bottom of the last screenshot).
   Then, you can send it to the other team members. If in doubt, just click on the orange “Copy.”
2. If you want to test it by yourself first: Use the incognito mode of your browser (simply open "new incognito tab" or "new private window" in your browser) to share the link with yourself and to have at least two or more players. You can only start the game if you have two players in the room.
3. Now you can get started. The game randomly decides who starts. The time is running in the top left. Team members should draw the term they see above as soon as possible.
   If the other team members have guessed the term and there is still time left, the next term can be drawn. There is one more point for each correctly guessed term.
   Here you can see my unfortunate attempt to draw “Sprint”. Mh, I've never been able to draw. 

1. Before playing for the first time, I recommend that you share your screen and share the game. The team members should all have briefly seen the screen remotely and understood the basics of the game.

   This way, you can also point out the different colors and pen sizes, also that you can write comments as well as answers on the right - which is always a lot of fun. Finally, it is probably also handy to know that the letters of the term you have to guess automatically start appearing above over time if it has not been guessed correctly yet.

2. Depending on how much time you have, you can set the game up differently. Either everyone suggests at least one term, or you only have 5 terms prepared and if these were guessed correctly, the game is over. 

In principle, that's about it. At best, the game generates a few laughs, and you may discover that someone on the team has a secret talent for drawing.

Something to note is that It is not easy to draw in the tool if you do not have a touchscreen, so I recommend using simpler terms. Team members should have a quick sense of achievement at the beginning of the remote retrospective. 

Final notes and psychological background

In theory, for this game, you could also organize yourselves into two sub-teams that compete against each other. To do this, you also have to be able to share the screens accordingly, so that the two teams can view two different screens. This may not possible with every remote video tool.

The nice thing about this game from a psychological point of view, is that it has the same effect as the draw toast exercise: the mental models of the team members of different things - product, sprint, customer - are automatically presented and harmonized through this exercise. 

For example, you might notice that a team member associates something negative with “customer” because he chose the color red in his drawing. You can find more about this in my blog post on this retrospective method.