The prize for the most popular retrospective of 2013 goes to … my retro in a pub where we played Jenga.
Thanks to my Marmite Voting system, I am able to confirm that the most popular retrospective by far was the one where we held the retro in the local pub. We found a mezzanine level where we could all sit without being watched, put the Jenga blocks on the table and ordered some drinks.
The premise was simple:
- Everyone writes down their thoughts on sticky notes for what they think went well, what didn’t go so well, and any ideas for improvement
- The first person sticks ONE note to the wall and pulls out a Jenga brick
- The person to their left then sticks up ONE note on the wall and pulls out a Jenga brick
- Repeat steps 2 and 3 until someone causes the Jenga stack to collapse – their name is then written on the wall
- The Jenga stack is rebuilt and you start again
- If anyone runs out of thoughts to post on the wall, they have to pull out TWO Jenga bricks
- Once everyone runs out of ideas, all players who caused the stack to fall over have a Jenga-off (i.e. one more game of Jenga) and the loser of that game has to write up the retro notes (we were going to make them pay the bar bill, but we decided that was a bit severe).
How do we beat that for the next retrospective? We’ve voted for a game of Operation!