Peter Stevens wrote a nice blog entry about Retrospectives [1] that is worth reading. I wanted to use seed to give you 10 ideas to improve your retrospective.

1. Change the standard format from time to time. Introduce new questions, or different colors.
2. Run the retrospective in a park or a garden, not in the office.
3. Read a book about NLP [2] and use the representation systems described in this book.
4. Learn to ask questions!
5. Ask at the end of the retrospective, how we can improve the retrospective next time.
6. Bring in artefacts from the Sprint. Artefact Contest [3]
7. Send an invitation to your team so they can bring DATA to the Retrospective.
8. Run a story workshop as a Retrospective … Use the 90 min to write a short story, a movie or a play about the last Sprint.
9. Use a future generation workshop … Start the retrospective in the future of 2011. What did you do to be better in 2011?
10. Go to a class that teaches you how to run meetings productively. Use what you learn.

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• [1] http://agilesoftwaredevelopment.com/blog/peterstev/start-trust-start-retrospective
• [2] Neurolinguistisches-Programmieren-Kommunikation-persönliche-Entfaltung  NLP,
• [3] Norman Kerth, Retrospectives