For most people, as they continue to work in an agile fashion, it becomes increasingly clear just how important running retrospectives at various levels is. We all start to feel for Gene Kim when he says “Improving daily work is more important than doing daily work.“

However, after we have done a few retrospectives teams start to feel “here we go again; another retrospective”. This feeling can be caused by a number of real issues that need to be addressed. For example, perhaps the team makes agreements to do something in the retrospective, and nothing actually happens.

But often it is caused by the fact that the meeting just feels like the same old thing. We ask ourselves “what went well, what didn’t go so well, and what do we want to improve” and that’s it.

The good new is that by changing things up - changing the goal the retrospective (e.g. “lets focus on improving quality”), changing the facilitation exercises you use, changing the tools you use - you can bring life back into the retrospective.

To help, here are some idea sources you can use to bring life to your retrospective:

• Fun Retrospectives by the Virtual Agile Coach. Pretty much variety of retros ready to be dropped into Mural or Miro.
• Boardle - Murals for all kinds of facilitation with some for retros in particular.
• Retrospective Wiki - Resource for sharing retrospective plans, tips & tricks, tools and ideas to help us get the most out of our retrospectives.
• A retrospective toolbox from Ben Linders - Exercises to keep things interesting
• “Dial-a-retrospective” or “Ret-ro-mat” - Uses the structure defined by Agile Retrospectives, and a suite of games / exercises to dial up a new retrospective.
• Tasty Cupcakes Tools for Innovation and Learning - Not just retrospectives, but exercises and games for all kinds of situations.
• Fun Retrospectives . Site with, no surprise, fun retrospectives.