Summary:

This simple activity can be used at the start of a sprint retrospective meeting in order to gauge people’s moods and to help the team empathise with each other.

 

Resources Required:

None in particular but it could be useful to take note of any key points raised.

 

Instructions:

  • Simply, each member of the team should describe the high point and low point from a set period of time (the last 7 days, the weekend  or in the previous sprint etc).
  • You can specify that team members must give a work related example or something outside of work or leave it up to them to decide.
  • In larger teams it may help if you select people at random (perhaps based on the score of the last presentation?) rather than going around in order as people may be concentrating more on what they are going to say than on what is being discussed when it is close to being their turn.

 

Purpose:

The purpose of this activity is to check and see if everyone is ‘in a good place’ in terms of their current mentality. It helps everyone to be a little bit more empathetic if they can see that others are struggling with something and it can also be a real boost when someone share a really positive (or funny) piece of news.

This activity can be done as a bit of an ice breaker at the start of a retrospective and could take just a couple of minutes per person.