Triple nickels

⏱ 3 min  ·  📅 2026

Triple nickels is a retrospective technique for generating and building on ideas as a team in a structured way. Its name comes from its original structure: three groups of five people who write five ideas in five minutes and then rotate their sheets of paper. It is usually carried out in the second phase of the retrospective, although it can also be used to uncover relevant topics from the sprint. It lasts between 30 and 60 minutes.

The central mechanism of Triple nickels (writing ideas on top of other people's ideas) pushes participants to broaden and deepen perspectives that are not their own. The result is richer than a conventional brainstorming session, where each person works only on their own ideas.

When to use it

• When the team needs to generate many ideas on a topic in a short time.
• When the retrospective tends to be dominated by the same voices: individual writing and passing the papers around give the whole team the same opportunity to contribute.
• As an alternative to Brainstorming/Filtering when you want people's ideas to build on each other's more explicitly.

How to run the activity

1. The team splits into groups of no more than five people. Each person is given a blank sheet of paper or sticky note.
2. The topic or question for generating ideas is defined. It should be specific: not "what would we improve?" but "what could we do to improve communication with the Product Owner?".
3. Each group member has five minutes to write down their ideas. Ideally five ideas, although reaching that number is not mandatory.
4. After five minutes, each person passes their paper to the person on their right. The goal now is to add new ideas based on the ones already written: developing them, challenging them, and complementing them.
5. The process is repeated until each first-round paper returns to the person who wrote it.
6. The team is asked to read aloud the ideas on their final paper.
7. The facilitator closes with reflection questions: What did you notice? What surprised you? Which ideas should be developed further?

Variant for small groups

If there are seven or fewer people, there is no need to split into groups: the activity can be run in five rounds with the whole team. Each person passes their paper to the person on their right, and the cycle continues until all rounds are completed.

With remote teams

In a remote format, the activity can be replicated with shared documents or with the sticky notes feature of digital whiteboards: each person writes in their own space, and then the spaces are reassigned to another person for the next round. It is more cumbersome than in person, but it works.

Common mistake

Choosing a topic that is too broad. If the question is generic ("what would we improve?"), the ideas tend to be equally generic and hard to prioritize. Triple nickels produces more useful results when the topic is specific and well defined. If the team has several important topics, it is better to run several short rounds of Triple nickels, one per topic, than one long round covering everything at once.

Resources

🔧 Diseñar una retrospectiva [Designing a retrospective] (in Spanish)Template · Scrum Manager

📄 Segunda fase de una retrospectiva: en busca de la mejora continua [Second phase of a retrospective: in pursuit of continuous improvement] (in Spanish)Scrum Manager Blog · Aug 2023

References

• Derby, Esther; Larsen, Diana. (2006). Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great. Pragmatic Bookshelf.

See also

Retrospective Brainstorming/Filtering Prioritize with dots Identify themes Circle of questions Working agreements

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