The Car Brand Retrospective 

A quick and fun retrospective

This is fun and really simple Scrum retrospective you can run with minimal stationery. It’s easy to understand and uses the simple start, stop and continue approach to retrospectives, which many teams are familiar with.

Each stage needs to be time-boxed and I’ve added some suggested timings below but these will vary depending on the team size.  

For other retrospective ideas take a look at the Sail Boat retrospective or the Thank You retrospective.

If you want to get the FREE instructions for this retro in Power Point slides, just add your email below.

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The Set-Up  

Typically 1 Scrum team of 7-9 members  

1. Book a room with plenty of wall space
2. Bring pens
3. Bring Post-It notes and A4 Paper
4. Bluetack
5. Bring some treats (if possible)

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Starting the Session (5 mins)      

Start the session by asking the following.

1. Think back about the last sprint and how you feel it went and then think of a car brand that would best fit how you felt about the sprint.
2. For example, if the sprint went amazingly well you might pick a Ferrari or a Lamborghini.
3. If you had a terrible sprint, it might be a right old banger!

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‍Getting creative (5mins)

1. Once everyone has noted down their car brand, for an extra bit of fun, ask the team to draw it as well.
2. Nothing fancy, so it doesn’t matter if you can draw or not. It’s more fun if you can’t.
3. Just use a rectangular Post-Note or an A4 piece of paper.
4. .This stage is optional if the team aren’t keen on drawing.

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Getting feedback (30-45mins)      

1. Now ask everyone to stick their car brand and car picture up on the wall. Let the team have a few minutes having a laugh at the various attempts to draw cars!
2. Next, ask for a volunteer to come up and talk about why they choose their car brand.
3. Whilst they’re giving their feedback, add any positives or negatives the individual or team raise and place them on Post-It notes under the car brand.
4. Repeat this until every team member has spoken.

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Voting (10 mins)

1. Once every team member has spoken and all the insights have been gathered, you need to quickly sort them with the help of the team.
2. Still under each car brand, group anything you must stop doing in the next sprint, start doing or continue doing.
3. Once all the Post-It notes are sorted, you need to ask the team to vote on their top three from each grouping.
4. With a pen, each team member can place ticks on their top three stop, starts and continue Post-Its. So their top three from each grouping.
5. Make sure the team all do this at the same time.

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Wrapping up (10 mins)    

1. Once you have a wall full of feedback and everyone has voted on by based on their priority, count up the votes and highlight the top three for each category (start, stop and continue)
2. Now agree who will own any of the top three if they require an action against them. This shouldn’t just be the Scrum Master taking ownership of these actions.
3. The last thing is to ask for feedback on how the session went so you can improve it for next time. 

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