🏅 Sports Day Challenge
Lace up your sneakers! Today, we'll race through our agile journey, celebrating victories, dropping bad habits, and practicing winning moves. Let's turn our sprint into a championship!
Template Columns
🏁 New Drills to Start
Suggest new strategies or actions we should adopt to boost our team's game.
Base column: Start⛔ Fouls to Stop
Point out unhelpful practices or blockers that are slowing our pace.
Base column: Stop🏆 Winning Plays to Continue
Highlight what’s working well for us and deserves to stay in our playbook.
Base column: ContinueAbout this template
The Sports Day Challenge retrospective uses a sports-inspired theme to help teams identify new actions to start, unproductive habits to stop, and practices to continue for ongoing success.
When to use this template
Use this format at the end of any sprint or project phase when you want to energize the team and encourage a playful, game-based reflection.
How to facilitate
Kick off with a quick welcome, explaining the sports theme and encouraging team members to embrace a playful, honest mindset for learning and improvement.
Set the stage by briefly recapping recent team achievements, challenges, and memorable moments to get everyone thinking about team performance.
Invite team members to add ideas to the New Drills to Start column, focusing on fresh techniques, tools, or habits to help the team level up.
Move to the Fouls to Stop column, asking the team to candidly identify blockers, inefficiencies, or negative patterns that are hampering progress.
Next, ask everyone to contribute examples to the Winning Plays to Continue column—celebrate team strengths and behaviors that should be retained.
Facilitate a team discussion for each column, grouping similar themes together and prioritizing key topics collectively.
Guide the group in selecting 2–3 actionable takeaways, assigning owners to drive follow-up.
Close the session by celebrating the team’s effort and wins, reinforcing positive energy and commitment to the next 'game.'
Pro Tips
Use sports metaphors throughout the session to keep the mood lively and reinforce the theme.
Encourage quieter team members to contribute by inviting thoughts directly or using anonymous input tools.
Keep examples concrete and linked to real work situations rather than abstract qualities.
Regularly rotate facilitators so everyone can bring their own spin to the sports theme.
Set a visible timer for each section to keep the session dynamic and focused.
FAQ
How do I keep the energy high if the team isn't sporty?
Focus on the playful spirit rather than sports expertise—explain that the theme is just for fun and adapt metaphors to what the team enjoys.
What if my team struggles to add items to 'New Drills to Start'?
Seed the discussion with examples or prompt with questions about recent challenges or desired improvements to spark ideas.
How do I turn identified 'fouls' into actionable improvements?
During discussion, ask the team what would look different if the foul was removed, and brainstorm first steps towards that change.
At a glance
- Duration
35–50 min
- Team Size
3-10 people
- Columns
3 columns
- Base Format
Start, Stop, Continue
Tags
Ready to get started?
Use this template to run your next retrospective