The Big Picture Icebreaker Puzzle Template

About The Big Picture Icebreaker Puzzle Template

Pete Lim, an Agile coach at Miro, developed this fun and engaging icebreaker for teams to learn about collaboration, communication, and big-picture thinking. This template is paired up with a quick retrospective, and it’s a great tool to bring teams together and find out how to collaborate better.

What’s the The Big Picture Icebreaker Puzzle Template?

This icebreaker consists of one puzzle that the assigned teams will solve. If you have a big squad, break them into smaller working pods; if your team is small, you can solve the puzzle together as a group.

The Big Picture Icebreaker Puzzle helps everyone to exercise teamwork and how to improve communication, and you can easily add it to your workshop or meeting board.

Benefits of using the Template

The Big Picture Icebreaker Puzzle helps everyone to exercise teamwork and how to improve communication. Every participant must place at least one piece of the puzzle, and everyone needs to communicate their move to the group so they know the best piece to move.

This icebreaker activity fosters collaboration and improves communication skills because everyone is invited to participate at least once, and decisions are made as a group and debated together.

After the puzzle is solved, everyone can share their insights on what was good and what could be better when working together.

How to use the Template

This icebreaker puzzle is easy to set up. The template guides you on how to run the icebreaker, and for creating the puzzle check the instructions below:

Here is how to set up the puzzle:

1. Create the puzzle

You can either create your puzzle by selecting one image and cutting it into a grid or use a free website such as Jigsaw Puzzles, which allows you to create and save images as a puzzle.

2. Upload the puzzle to your Miro board

First, upload your puzzle images to the board with the upload icon on the left toolbar. Afterward, mix them up and rotate some of them so people have one more level of difficulty.

3. Duplicate your puzzle

Duplicate it as many times as you need according to how many teams you’ll have in our session. Each team should have its own workspace to solve the puzzle and use the allocated spaces on the template.

How to run the Icebreaker Puzzle

1. Each frame contains a set of instructions where participants can know how to solve the puzzle.

2. Set a timer, so everyone has the same amount of time to complete the task.

3. Check the winner of the icebreaker.

4. Run a quick retrospective placed at the template's center to get some insights about this activity. There are four quadrants in the retro:

• What made building this task difficult?

• What would have made this task easier?

• What similar challenges do you face at work?

• What should you be doing to make collaboration easier?

Pro tip:

• If you have a large group, always break them into smaller groups.

• Three minutes is enough to solve a 20-piece puzzle.

• Feel free to increase the difficulty levels by rotating pieces and mixing them well.

• Celebrate victories, and get people excited about what they’ve achieved.

• In the end, if you have time, you can teach people one or two lessons about collaboration and communication.

For more tips, access Pete Lim videos on our Miroverse page.