Retrospective ideas for teams that are tired of the same three questions.

How a retro runs

Whatever the format, most good retros follow the same five steps. The formats below change the middle; keep the start and the end.

Quick formats

For short retros, or a team new to them.

1. 1.

   Start, stop, continue

   The classic

   What should we start doing, stop doing and keep doing? Simple and always useful.

2. 2.

   Mad, sad, glad

   For feelings, not just process

   What made people angry, disappointed or pleased. Good after a hard stretch.

3. 3.

   Keep, add, less, more

   Finer than start, stop, continue

   Four columns that let people suggest turning something up or down rather than on or off.

4. 4.

   One word

   Five minutes

   Each person describes the last sprint in one word, then explains it. A good opener, or a whole retro on a busy week.

Visual formats

Pictures make people think differently. Draw the frame on a shared whiteboard and let everyone add notes.

1. 5.

   Sailboat

   Wind, anchors, rocks, island

   The island is the goal; wind is what pushed us forward, anchors held us back, rocks are risks ahead.

2. 6.

   Rose, thorn, bud

   Good, bad, promising

   A rose is something that went well, a thorn a problem, a bud an idea or opportunity starting to grow.

3. 7.

   Starfish

   Five arms

   Keep doing, less of, more of, stop doing, start doing. Useful when start, stop, continue feels too blunt.

4. 8.

   Timeline

   For long or eventful stretches

   Draw the period as a line and let everyone mark highs and lows. Patterns show up that a list hides.

Deeper formats

For when a problem keeps coming back, or a project has ended.

1. 9.

   Five whys

   One problem, to the root

   Pick one problem and ask "why?" until you reach a cause you can change.

2. 10.

   Pre-mortem

   Looking ahead

   Imagine the next project has failed. What went wrong? Then plan to prevent the likeliest causes.

3. 11.

   Lean coffee

   The team sets the agenda

   Everyone suggests topics, the team votes, and you discuss them in order with a timer.

4. 12.

   Liked, learned, lacked, longed for

   After a project

   Four questions that balance what went well with what was missing.

Formats that lift the mood

After a tough release or a long quarter, start with what went right.

1. 13.

   Kudos round

   Ten minutes

   Everyone thanks someone for something specific. Then move on to what to change.

2. 14.

   Three little pigs

   Straw, sticks, bricks

   What's fragile, what holds but could be stronger, and what's solid. Light-hearted, but it finds real risks.

3. 15.

   Hopes and worries

   Before a big stretch

   What people hope for and what worries them about what's next. Pair it with a few team building questions if the team is new.

Running a retro online

• Write first, in silence. Five minutes of everyone writing notes on their own gets ideas from quiet people, not just the loudest.
• Use a shared board. A shared online whiteboard or a simple doc with columns. Keep the same board from retro to retro so you can look back.
• Keep cameras optional, voices on. What matters is that people talk; nobody needs to stare at a grid of faces for forty-five minutes.
• Rotate the facilitator. Someone different each time keeps the format fresh and lets the manager just take part.
• Allow anonymous notes when trust is low. Honest input beats polite input. Move back to named notes as trust grows.

Make the actions stick

• Two or three actions, no more. A long list of actions means none of them happen.
• An owner for each. "We should" isn't an action. A name and a date are.
• Put them on the board. Add the actions to your task board with the rest of the work, not in a separate document.
• Open with last time's actions. Start each retro by checking what happened to the last ones. It's the fastest way to show retros matter.