Easter Retro

Hop into a festive reflection with our Easter-themed retrospective and Egg Dash icebreaker. Perfect for remote teams looking to celebrate their successes while identifying improvements in a fun, engaging format. This template combines playful Easter metaphors with structured reflection to help your team hatch plans for future sprints.

What Is the Easter Retro?

The Easter Retro is a seasonally-themed retrospective framework that uses Easter metaphors to guide your team's reflection. The template includes two main components:

  1. Egg Dash Icebreaker: A quick, competitive game that gets the team energized and focused before the main retrospective.

  2. Easter-themed Retrospective: A structured reflection organized into four quadrants that use Easter-related metaphors:

    • Eggs Collected (successes and achievements)
    • Broken Eggs (challenges and failures)
    • Rabbit Holes (topics needing deeper exploration)
    • Bunny Hops (improvement actions)

This playful approach maintains the core retrospective structure while adding a refreshing visual theme that encourages participation and creativity.

Benefits & When to Use

Benefits:

  • Breaks the monotony of regular retrospectives with a seasonally-themed approach
  • The Egg Dash icebreaker energizes the team and builds camaraderie
  • Clear visual metaphors make it easy for team members to understand where to place their thoughts
  • Provides a dedicated space for deeper topics (Rabbit Holes) that often get overlooked
  • Encourages specific, actionable improvements (Bunny Hops)

Ideal timing:

  • During or around Easter season for thematic relevance
  • When team engagement in retrospectives has been declining
  • After completing a significant project milestone or release
  • When your team needs a morale boost while still collecting meaningful feedback

How to Run an Easter Retro Session

Total time: 45-60 minutes

Part 1: Egg Dash Icebreaker (5-10 minutes)

  1. Start by explaining the Egg Dash rules: team members will race to claim sticky notes, then check under each for Easter eggs.
  2. Ask participants to grab their tokens from the tray provided.
  3. Start the countdown to begin the race.
  4. Once the timer ends, players claim sticky notes by dropping their tokens on them.
  5. After all stickies are claimed, players reveal how many eggs they've found.
  6. Move collected eggs to the basket area to determine the winner.

Part 2: Easter Retrospective (35-50 minutes)

  1. Setup and Introduction (5 min): Explain the quadrants and their meanings. Start a meeting to enable private writing.

  2. Individual Reflection (10 min): Ask team members to add stickies to:

    • Eggs Collected: What went well? What did we achieve? Any kudos to share?
    • Broken Eggs: What didn't go well? Where could we improve?
    • Rabbit Holes: What issues need deeper exploration?

  3. Share and Discuss (15-20 min): Review each quadrant, allowing team members to explain their notes and identify patterns.

  4. Improvement Planning (10 min): Based on the discussion, ask the team to add their ideas for "Bunny Hops" - small improvements that would help reach goals.

  5. Action Setting (5 min): Collect agreed improvements in the Actions box. Use the "@" symbol to assign actions and track them in your team dashboard.

Tips for a Successful Easter Retro

  • Embrace the theme: Encourage egg puns and playful language—use the counter to track them for extra fun!
  • Timebox discussions: Use the built-in timer to keep the session moving, especially when discussing Rabbit Holes.
  • Balance quadrants: If your team tends to focus heavily on problems, actively encourage them to spend equal time on Eggs Collected.
  • Prioritize Bunny Hops: Aim for 3-5 concrete actions rather than a long list that won't get implemented.
  • Follow up: Schedule time to check on action items before your next retrospective to ensure accountability.
  • Adapt the metaphors: Take a moment at the start to explain how each quadrant relates to traditional retrospective categories (What went well, What didn't, etc.).
  • Golden Egg rule: Consider adding a special reward for whoever finds the "Golden Egg" during the icebreaker to boost engagement.

Remember that while the Easter theme adds fun, the primary goal is to generate meaningful reflection and actionable improvements for your team's processes and collaboration.

Use this template