Christmas Dinner Retrospective

It’s almost Christmas time, and this week is the last week before some of my team members go on holiday.

Time for a Christmas Dinner Retrospective! I wanted to create an atmosphere in which we could lean back, reflect and look back on the past year. So I created a digital Christmas table setting with digital food and beverages, with assignments in different rounds.

First I welcomed the team to the Team Christmas Table and invited them to take place on the chair with their name card.

Check in

Before we could get started, I asked them to paste an avatar or picture of themselves on their chair. After that we started with the check in. Every team member wrote a mark on a scale of 1 to 10 on a post it, that represented how they felt about last year, and we did a quick round where everyone explained their mark. Meanwhile everyone could take a beverage and put it on the table.

Round One

After that I asked the team the following:

·       Write on the green post it: what was your most positive team experience last year?

·       Write on the red post it: what was your toughest moment in or with the team?

·       Next: give your green post it to the person on your right, and the red post it to the person on your left.

·       Explain your received post its to the team, for example: “I think [team member] means …, because…..” Ask for help if needed, and check if your interpretations are right.

It wasn’t too difficult, because many things were already mentioned in the check in. But the team really enjoyed explaining their colleagues most positive and toughest moments, and it helped them to step into each other’s shoes and see things from a different viewpoint.

After that I asked everyone to take one piece of food and put it on their plate.

Round Two

For round two I prepared a list of questions to reflect back on 2021, you can find the questions here.

There are 42 questions, so ask every team member to create 7 dices of 6 sides (for example via this link).

I asked the team members one by one to throw the dice and answer the question with the matching number. If there was a question they couldn’t or would rather not answer, they could pass the question to another team member. The reward for every answered question was another piece of virtual food.

We played about 3 rounds and had a lot of fun! Normally, as a scrum master I facilitate the team retrospectives and don’t take part, but in this one I didn’t only facilitate but also took part myself, and it was great!

The Christmas table setting really contributed to the relaxed atmosphere, we could really take the time to reflect and it also helped us to get to know each other a little bit better.

Preparation

If you’d also like to give this a try, here’s the material you need:

·       Picture of table from top view

·       Picture of chairs from top view

·       Beverage and food pictures from top view

·       Name cards (I made them in powerpoint)

·       Prepare a green and red post it for every team member

·       Ask everyone to wear a Christmas sweater and/or hat

·       Find some Christmas music to play when the meeting starts (don’t forget to ‘share with sound’ if you’re using Teams!)

·       And of course: find yourself a Christmas background if you don’t have one yet!

Yes, it takes quite some preparation time. But in my experience, it was totally worth the effort.

Good luck and let me know what you think!