Easter Retrospective

In the easter retrospective template, you’ll get into that uplifting, optimistic spirit with your team. After all, aren’t agile retrospectives all about new beginnings and regeneration?

Easter is all about new beginnings. Snow is melting, chicks are hatching, and saplings are peeking up out of the ground. 

What pleasant surprises delighted you? What projects and ideas are you looking forward to bringing to life? And who deserves a bouquet of tulips, an Easter bunny, or a chocolate egg? 

Get ready to come together with your agile team for some sweetness, celebration, and a springtime Easter egg retrospective format.  

This past project or sprint, what unexpected lessons did you come away with? 

For this prompt, share a tool, approach, or strategy that didn’t seem important at first, but ended up playing a big role in your work, or its outcomes.

An Easter egg is usually a fun, positive surprise. But it’s okay if what you share for this prompt is something more ambiguous. Doing great work is all about growing and pushing yourself – and that can be uncomfortable. So, even bad surprises that cropped up can be an Easter egg!

Example: The product malfunctioned a couple of times in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep. That was a nasty surprise. How can we make sure we identify this quicker in future?. 

What new ideas, approaches, or processes do you want to cultivate this Spring? Has anything faded away that you’d like to bring back?

If there’s anything you’ve been mulling over, there’s no better time than Easter to coax it into reality. Share those seeds now! Maybe the retro facilitator can even come up with some action items to help your Scrum team bloom during the next iteration.

Example: I think it would help our work quality to keep more regular contact with our clients. What if we established 3-5 check-ins throughout the project, instead of just a kickoff and wrap-up?

What positive outcomes are you hoping to see this Spring? Are there any new beginnings you want to see, or existing situations that you’d like to resolve?

For this prompt, you can also share things you hoped for during the last year, or last sprint you’re looking back on. Did those dreams become a reality? 

Example: I want to see us adding more information to backlog items. It’s hard to understand the full context of an issue when there’s only a few lines of text explaining it.

It wouldn’t be Easter without chocolate, so finish your sprint retrospective with something sweet! Which of your team members deserves a chocolate egg or bunny for their kindness and hard work? 

Now’s the time to share a token of appreciation. Who came through for you, made work better, or just offered great ideas this past sprint?

Example: Wolfgang has been so thoughtful and reliable lately. Whenever I’m not sure about something I’m working on, he’s the perfect person to talk it through with. 

Save this retrospective format for the sweet, sunny vibes of Easter! 

You and your team can enjoy looking back together – while also planning for the future, and getting excited for a fresh start. Think of it as an Easter egg hunt for grownups!

First things first, you can sign up for Parabol for free. Then facilitators can start this meeting in Parabol by selecting their team on the right and then hitting that vibrant Add New Meeting button. 

Jump into Parabol and select Retro Meeting with the arrows, then use the dropdown to select the Easter retrospective template. This is where you’ll find Parabol’s library of 40+ pre-made and customizable retrospective formats. 

Every Parabol retrospective begins with an optional icebreaker. This box is checked by default. You don’t have to do one, but we recommend it – especially for remote teams. 

If you’re doing an icebreaker, you’ll have a random question to answer. You can refresh it if you want another option, and of course you can create your own if you want.

After the icebreaker you’ll move on to the reflect stage. This is where your team will do all their ideation and brainstorm in silence using the prompts above. All reflections are kept anonymous at this stage to prevent groupthink. Parabol gives Scrum Masters or meeting facilitators the option to timebox this process.

All Parabol sprint retrospectives can be run synchronously or asynchronously. Functionalities such as the timer, voting and multiplayer grouping help you make your retrospective exercise a success and make facilitation easier.

Team members can all leave reflections together, or do it at a time that works for them. Also, reflections are anonymous, and no one can see them until you’re done working on them.

After the reflect phase, you’ll vote on issues to discuss, talk about the most voted on items, and follow up with action items for each topic so you can make continuous improvement a reality.

Parabol will send a summary of the retro when you’re done so nobody needs to take notes. 

If you like this template, you might also like other seasonal retrospective ideas to welcome in Spring, including the Holi retrospective, Marie Kondo retrospective, Midsummer retrospective or Rose Thorn Bud retrospective.