A good lightweight recognition exercise for your next Retrospective: tokens of appreciation

Today I read a blog entry which reminded me about a good lightweight exercise I have used in Agile retrospectives very for recognizing and fostering team collaboration.

It is called the token of appreciation. Here is how it works:

1. Bring a chocolate box to the retrospective
2. Ask people to form a circle.
3. You can start as a facilitator by saying: “I would like to give a chocolate for NAME as a recognition on that time when he/she helped me with…
4. Then you give the chocolate box to that person and ask him to repeat the gesture.

I found this exercise especially useful for end of projects or end of release exercise. The participants usually enjoy it and talk in a positive way about the good things their teammates did and how they appreciate it.

This blog entry about IGN describes another implementation of the same idea: token of appreciation for for recognition. A big difference is that the tokens are not eatable and translate to money. I am interested to hear the drawbacks of this as a bonus policy and alternatives to it.