Thread by @dmytri

A thread about icebreakers.

So, everybody is complaining about online meetings, I've posted my presentations and board templates already, but one thing that people neglect is icebreakers.

#agile #meetings #suddenlyremote

People think that because these are internal meetings, that icebreakers are not required, after all, well know all know each other.

However, the point of icebreakers is not necessarily to get to know each other, but get everyone loosed up and talking.

My favourite icebreaker of all time is Agile Faces, one that I picked up with @RedHatLabs, however this one is hard to do for remote meetings, and takes a bit of time.

I needed something that I could start almost every meeting with, and that anyone could facilitate.

So I settled on, the candy game, here is an description from FunRetrospectives:

funretrospectives.com/candy-love/

The game is simple, you have a list of questions, each with a colour, and ajar of candies. Participants take a random candy, and then answer the question with the same colour

We use @discord as our remote office, so I created a `!candy` macro with the DiceParser bot, so that participants can chose a virtual candy and get the colour.

Every week I add a card with new questions, here is this weeks:

So, what makes a good question?

The point is not really the answers or facts presented, the point is to get the person talking.

So making the question should not be approached as "what do I want to know about my colleagues" but rather "how can I get my colleagues talking"

So, I made a poll (using modernballots.com) where my team could rate the questions we have used so far to understand what people enjoyed most.

The number one rated questions was:

This has the elements of a great question, there is no good or bad answer, no correct answer, it's open ended and encourages role play, and the rest of the team can easily join in.

Similar questions where also highly rated.

Food related questions tended to do well too:

The lowest rated questions was this one.

Why is this a bad question? Because it asks the person to remember and recount a fact, rather than just improvise and role play. If nothing comes to mind, they are kind of on the spot.

Starting your meetings with the candy game is a great way to build a creative and fun mood, make sure every talks, and takes only a few minutes to do. It works great for remote meetings.

Here are some more highly rated questions:

Are you doing anything to get your meetings started in an effective and engaging way? I would love to hear about it!