🏡🔨 House Renovation Madness
Grab your hard hats! Let’s renovate our process together—celebrate completed rooms, tackle leaky foundations, and knock down what's not working. Brick by brick, let's build a more beautiful project future!
Template Columns
🧱 Completed Rooms
Share project highlights and improvements that made you feel accomplished, like finishing a new room.
Base column: Glad💧 Leaky Foundations
Reflect on aspects that didn’t go as planned, much like finding an unexpected leak mid-renovation.
Base column: Sad🔨 Knocked-Over Walls
Vent about frustrations or blockers—those stubborn walls we need to break through!
Base column: MadAbout this template
The House Renovation Madness retrospective uses a playful home improvement theme to help teams celebrate successes, address underlying issues, and tackle blockers, promoting constructive conversations and continuous improvement.
When to use this template
Run this retrospective after a challenging sprint, project phase, or when your team needs to rebuild momentum and re-energize collaboration.
How to facilitate
Welcome the team and introduce the House Renovation Madness theme, explaining each column and encouraging creative thinking.
Ask everyone to privately add cards to the columns: Completed Rooms for achievements, Leaky Foundations for things that went wrong, Knocked-Over Walls for frustrations or blockers.
Invite team members to read and group similar cards together in each column to reveal common patterns.
Facilitate a discussion focused on key insights: celebrate wins, explore root causes of 'leaks,' and brainstorm ways to break down blockers.
Guide the group to prioritize actionable items, assigning clear owners and next steps for any issues or ideas.
Close by reflecting briefly on how the team can keep building a stronger foundation and maintain momentum going forward.
Pro Tips
Encourage storytelling and analogies to make insights more memorable and engaging for the team.
Keep discussions solution-focused, especially when addressing Leaky Foundations and Knocked-Over Walls, to prevent venting from taking over.
Allow team members to add cards anonymously to ensure candor around frustrations or sensitive topics.
Consider rotating the facilitator role to keep the format fresh and perspectives varied.
FAQ
How do I handle negative feedback that emerges in Leaky Foundations or Knocked-Over Walls?
Acknowledge concerns empathetically and redirect the group towards finding solutions and learning points rather than blame.
What if team members are hesitant to share frustrations?
Offer the option to submit cards anonymously, create psychological safety, and model openness by sharing your own honest experiences first.
How much time should we spend on each column?
Allocate roughly equal time to each, but be flexible—if blockers are a major pain point, give extra time to Knocked-Over Walls while ensuring celebrations aren't skipped.
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At a glance
- Duration
45–60 min
- Team Size
4-10 people
- Columns
3 columns
- Base Format
Glad, Sad, Mad
Tags
Ready to get started?
Use this template to run your next retrospective