retrospective exercises toolbox

Design your own Valuable Agile Retrospectives with the retrospective exercises toolbox

Agile Retrospectives are a great way for teams to continuously improve their way of working. Getting actions out of a retrospective that are doable, and getting them done, helps teams to learn and improve continuously.

Teams use retrospective exercises within agile frameworks like Scrum, Lean, SAFe, XP, DAD, LeSS, Nexus or Kanban to find the vital few improvement actions. Deploying suitable exercises helps teams to get more business value out of agile retrospectives.

This Retrospective Exercises Toolbox features:

  • 77 Exercises for your agile retrospectives
  • Public and in-house workshops to get more value out of retrospectives
  • 19 Agile Coaching tools that you can use in retrospectives
  • 20 Online sources for retrospectives exercises
  • 18 Books on agile retrospectives
  • 50 Tools for agile retrospectives

Anything missing? Email me at [email protected] and I’ll add it!

Exercises for Agile Retrospectives

Note: I’m an affiliate for some of the tools included in this toolbox, if you visit their website via the above links and sign up then I will receive a commission.

Making your Agile Retrospectives more valuable

Do you want to spice up your agile retrospective? I give public and in-house workshops where you can learn different retrospective exercises and practice your facilitation skills:

Public workshops

There are no upcoming events.

In-house workshops

I give private in-house workshops (onsite and online!), which I tailor to the specific situation and needs of your company. These workshops help teams and organizations to increase their effectiveness and agility and to deliver more value. Contact me to discuss the possibilities!

More exercises for your Agile Retrospectives

Valuable Agile Retrospectives Cover 200 - 300The successful book Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives – A Toolbox of Retrospective Exercises written by Luis Gonçalves and Ben Linders contains many exercises that you can use to facilitate retrospectives, supported with the “why”, “what” and “how” of retrospectives, the business value and benefits that they can bring you, and advice for introducing and improving retrospectives.

Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives is available as ebook and paperback. This book is has been translated into many languages, see translated editions.

Agile Retrospective Tools

In my webshop, I provide books and tools that you can use in your retrospectives and that can help you to improve your facilitation skills:

Download these tools from my webshop, print out PDF files or select jpeg images, and get started to make your agile retrospectives more valuable! 

Sources of Retrospective Exercises

Besides this Retrospective Exercises Toolbox and Getting Value out of Agile Retrospectives there are many other sources for agile retrospective exercises:

Books with Retrospective Tips and Exercises

Tools for remote/distributed retrospectives

Partner/sponsored tools:

  • Retrium– Run effective retrospectives with Retrium
  • Weave – Collaboration platform with serious games
  • TeamRetro – Agile retrospectives made easy, effective, and engaging

Note: I’m an affiliate for the above tools, if you visit their website via the above links and sign up then I will receive a commission.

Other tools:

  • Lino – Sticky notes
  • TeamMood – app for capturing team mood
  • Groupmap – remote brainstorming & feedback
  • Goreflect – Whiteboard style retrospectives
  • Miro – The online collaborative whiteboard platform to bring teams together, anytime, anywhere
  • IdeaBoardz – Collect what went well & didn’t go well
  • EasyRetro – Improve with Fun Sprint Retrospectives
  • Stormboard – Online Brainstorming & Collaboration
  • Scrum Toolkit – Scrum retrospective in distributed teams
  • RetroTool – Free tool for remote retrospectives
  • Retrospectives from SoftwareDevTools – AddOn for Atlassian
  • Scrumile – empowers your teams to be more efficient and effective
  • Parabol – make good teams great
  • Sprintboard – Free retro boards for agile Scrum developers
  • Reetro – Retrospectives made easier
  • Retrospective Poker Cards by Scrummastered / Daria Bagina
  • ScatterSpoke – Improving the way teams improve
  • Dottie – tracks the happiness of your team in just 10 seconds each day
  • bttr – Improve yourself, improve your team
  • RetroBox – Slack app for bias-free and focused agile retrospectives
  • RetroBoard – Premium Retrospectives Your Team Will Love
  • Neatro – Simple retrospective tool for Agile Teams
  • retros.work – Stroomlijn jouw retrospective proces met retros.work
  • Metro Retro – allows teams that are remote or co-located to run productive, engaging and fun retrospectives
  • Jamboard – an interactive whiteboard system developed by Google
  • Realtime Retro – Take retrospectives to the next level
  • Sprintlio – Agile retrospective tool for remote teams
  • Sprint Boards – Retro Boards for Agile Developers
  • RemoteRetro – helps teams turn pain points into progress
  • Outro – A new take on retrospectives for progressive teams
  • Retrospect – Real-time collaboration tool for retrospectives, tasks & ideas
  • Retroly – A fun simple tool for agile retrospectives
  • GoRetro – making the entire retro process seamless, simple, fun, colorful, productive, and unlimited
  • Team O’clock – Lead your remote teams to accelerated agility
  • Retrobot – Effective retrospectives for agile teams – No longer available?
  • Retro.app – An online retrospective tool that will keep your meetings fun, focused, and productive
  • Echometer – uses psychological know-how to help unleash the potential of employees & teams in organizations through team retrospectives
  • Boldare – Retro made faster and easier
  • Retro – Free Online Retrospective Tool by go agile express
  • Scrumlr – Progress is impossible without change
  • TeleRetro – Retrospectives, enhanced
  • Fraankly – Give every team member a voice
  • ScrumBuddy – Let’s get ready to spice up your retrospective (Beta)
  • retrospective.pro – Retrospective tool that facilitates teams to asynchronously grow and stay agile

Tools that are no longer supported

  • Instant Agenda – to turn your retrospectives into team improvement (shut down Nov 5, 2018)
  • Senseitool – with follow up of actions (Has Sunset on June 1, 2020)
  • Teamworki

Need help?

Feel free to contact me to learn how to improve your agile retrospectives to get more value from doing them.

 +31 6 2901 3863
 [email protected]
@BenLinders
Ben Linders
Ben Linders Consulting
Icons-mini-icon_home Tilburg, The Netherlands

Last updated: May 23, 2023. More exercises will be added, stay tuned and bookmark this page!

 

This Post Has 5 Comments

  1. Florina C

    Great idea to improve and mame the retrospective a fresh and valuable session!

    1. BenLinders

      Thanks Florina!

      I’m interested to hear which exercises you used and how they worked out. Can you let me know?

  2. Jamie

    Hi Ben, would you mind adding Metro Retro (metroretro.io) to the list of Tools for remote/distributed retrospectives?
    Metro Retro is a free real-time retrospective whiteboard, with fun collaboration tools made specifically for the agile retrospective process.

    Thank you!
    Jamie

    1. Ben Linders

      Thanks for reaching out. Metro Retro has been added 🙂

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