Common Retrospective Formats

To facilitate reflection and the generation of improvement actions, there are several formats or structures to guide retrospective meetings.

These formats help focus the conversation, ensure participation and make the process more dynamic and effective.

The choice of format can vary depending on the team's preferences, maturity level or simply to avoid monotony.

As an Agile Coach, knowing and knowing how to facilitate different formats will allow you to adapt the retrospective to the context and keep it fresh and productive. The goal is always to identify areas for improvement and define concrete actions.

What Went Right / What Didn't Go Right / What to Try

This is the classic and simplest format. A whiteboard (physical or virtual) is divided into three columns:

What Went Well: Positive aspects of the last work cycle that you want to maintain or reinforce.

What did not go well: Problems, obstacles or negative aspects that were encountered and need to be addressed.

What to try / Ideas for improvement: Concrete suggestions or experiments that the team could try in the next cycle to improve.

Team members generate ideas (usually on post-its) for each column, then group, discuss and derive specific action items, especially from the "What Didn't Go Well" and "What to Try" columns.

Start / Stop / Continue

Similar to the previous format but more oriented to direct action, this model uses three categories:

Start: What new actions or behaviors should we start doing?

Stop: What current actions or behaviors should we stop doing because they are ineffective or harmful?

Continue: What actions or behaviors are working well and should we make sure we keep doing them?

This format focuses the conversation directly on behavior or process changes that the team can implement.

Sailboat (Anchors, Wind), Starfish (Keep, More, Less, Stop, Start).

These are more creative and metaphorical formats:

Sailboat (Sailboat): uses the metaphor of a sailboat to represent the team.

• Brainstorming is done on:
• The Wind: What drives us forward (things that help)?
• The Anchors: What holds us back or slows us down (impediments)?
• (Optional) The Island/Land: What is our goal? The Crew: Who are we?

Starfish: Offers more nuance than Start/Stop/Continue with five categories:

• Keep Doing: What's working well.
• More Of: Valuable activities that should be intensified.
• Less Of: Activities that provide little value or are inefficient.
• Stop Doing: That which is harmful or useless.
• Start Doing: New ideas to try.

Avoiding Purely Emotional Approaches (Happy/Sad)

While acknowledging emotions is important for team health, retrospective formats that focus exclusively on feelings (such as "What made me happy / What made me sad") may be less effective in generating concrete improvement actions.

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