Originally published on AIYUN.
If your retros have started to feel like the same three sticky notes every fortnight, the format is often the problem, not the team. Changing the questions changes what people notice. This guide gives you 25 retrospective ideas, grouped by what they are good for, with a quick table so you can pick one in under a minute.
A good rule: choose the format based on what the team needs this sprint, not on what you ran last time.
New to facilitating? Start with how to run a sprint retrospective, a step-by-step 60-minute agenda.
First, the shape every good retro follows
Every good sprint retrospective follows the same five steps, described by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen in Agile Retrospectives (2006): set the stage, gather data, generate insights, decide what to do, and close. Most retro formats are just different ways to run the middle of that structure.
- Set the stage – remind people why you are here and make it safe to speak.
- Gather data – what actually happened this sprint.
- Generate insights – why it happened.
- Decide what to do – one to three concrete actions.
- Close – a quick check on whether the retro itself was worth the time.
Many teams open by reading Norm Kerth's Prime Directive, which asks everyone to assume people did the best job they could with what they knew at the time. It sounds formal, but it does a useful job: it moves the conversation from blame to systems.
The 25 formats at a glance
| # | Format | What it asks | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Start, Stop, Continue | What should we start, stop and keep doing? | New teams; a fast, no-surprises default |
| 2 | Went well / To improve / Actions | Three plain columns | Short retros, teams new to retros |
| 3 | Mad, Sad, Glad | How did the sprint make you feel? | Surfacing frustration that is not being said |
| 4 | 4Ls | Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for | End of a release or a learning-heavy sprint |
| 5 | Sailboat | Wind (helps), anchors (slows), rocks (risks), island (goal) | Linking day-to-day issues to a goal |
| 6 | Starfish | Keep, more of, less of, stop, start | Fine-tuning a team that is already working well |
| 7 | KALM | Keep, Add, More, Less | A gentler version of Starfish |
| 8 | DAKI | Drop, Add, Keep, Improve | Cleaning up process clutter |
| 9 | Rose, Thorn, Bud | Win, pain point, opportunity | Balanced, upbeat sessions |
| 10 | Timeline | Plot key events and mood across the sprint | Long sprints, incidents, after leave or holidays |
| 11 | Speedcar | Engine (pushes us), parachute (slows us), abyss (danger) | Teams focused on flow and speed |
| 12 | Hot air balloon | Hot air (lifts), sandbags (weighs down), storms (ahead) | Looking forward as well as back |
| 13 | Three little pigs | House of straw, sticks, bricks | Talking about technical debt and fragility |
| 14 | Five whys | Ask why until you reach a cause you can act on | One recurring problem that keeps coming back |
| 15 | Circles and soup | What we control, what we influence, what we must accept | Teams stuck complaining about things outside their control |
| 16 | Lean Coffee retro | People propose topics, vote, talk in timeboxes | Mature teams who know what they want to discuss |
| 17 | 1-2-4-All | Think alone, then pairs, then fours, then whole group | Bigger groups; getting quiet voices heard |
| 18 | Team radar | Score yourselves 1–5 on a few agreed values | Tracking change over several sprints |
| 19 | Kudos / appreciation round | Thank one person for something specific | After a hard sprint; morale |
| 20 | Pre-mortem | Imagine the next release failed. Why? | Before a big launch or risky change |
| 21 | Futurespective | It is six months from now and things went great. What changed? | New teams, new quarter, after a reorg |
| 22 | Working agreements review | Which of our agreements are we actually keeping? | Recurring friction about how people work together |
| 23 | Action item review | What happened to last sprint's actions? | Teams whose actions keep disappearing |
| 24 | Themed board (movie, footy, holiday) | Familiar categories in a playful wrapper | Breaking routine; end of year |
| 25 | Open retro (one question) | "What is the one thing we should change?" | Short on time; very focused teams |
How to pick: match the format to the moment
The team is new, or retros are new
Stick to plain formats: Start, Stop, Continue or Went well / To improve. People need to learn that the retro is safe and that actions happen before they need clever metaphors.
Something went wrong
Use a Timeline to rebuild what happened, then Five whys on the one or two moments that mattered most. Keep the Prime Directive visible. If the issue was a production incident, a separate blameless post-incident review is usually better than squeezing it into the sprint retro.
Morale is low
Mad, Sad, Glad lets feelings out in a structured way. Follow it with a kudos round so people leave lighter than they arrived. If the same frustrations keep showing up, Circles and soup helps the team separate what they can fix from what they need to escalate.
Things are fine, which is its own problem
Comfortable teams drift. Starfish or KALM ask for small adjustments rather than big problems. A Pre-mortem on the next piece of work often surfaces risks nobody mentions in a "how did it go" retro.
You are short on time
Run the open one-question retro in 15 minutes: two minutes silent writing, group, vote, discuss the top item, agree one action. Done is better than skipped.
Facilitation tips that make any format work
- Write silently first. Give everyone three to five minutes to add notes before anyone talks. It stops the loudest person setting the agenda.
- Let people be anonymous when it matters. For sensitive topics, anonymous cards get you the honest version. You can reveal authors later if the team is comfortable.
- Group, then vote. Cluster similar cards, then give each person three votes. Talk about the top two or three clusters only.
- Timebox the discussion. Eight to ten minutes per topic is plenty. If it needs more, it probably needs its own meeting.
- Rotate the facilitator. When the Scrum Master always runs it, the retro starts to belong to them. Rotating spreads ownership.
- Remote? Turn cameras on for the discussion, not the writing. Silent writing works fine with cameras off; discussion is better when people can see each other.
- Mind the time zones. A team spread across Perth and Sydney has a two or three hour gap, depending on daylight saving. Do not always make the same people stay late.
How to make action items actually stick
To make retro action items stick, agree only one to three small, specific actions, give each a named owner, put them on the sprint board with the rest of the work, and open the next retro by reviewing them. The most common complaint about retros is not the format; it is that nothing changes.
- Fewer actions. One to three per retro. Ten actions means zero actions.
- Make them small and specific. "Improve communication" is a wish. "Post a daily update in the team channel by 10am, starting Monday" is an action.
- One owner each. A named person, not "the team". They do not have to do all the work; they make sure it happens.
- Put them where the work lives. Add actions to the sprint backlog or board, so they compete for time like any other work.
- Open the next retro with them. Spend the first five minutes on last sprint's actions: done, in progress, or dropped on purpose. This single habit does more than any format.
- Drop actions honestly. If an action no longer matters, close it and say so. Zombie actions teach people that retro actions are not real.
A sample 45-minute retro
| Time | Step |
|---|---|
| 0–5 min | Check-in question and last sprint's actions |
| 5–12 min | Silent writing on the board (e.g. Sailboat) |
| 12–17 min | Group similar cards, then dot vote |
| 17–35 min | Discuss the top two or three themes |
| 35–42 min | Agree one to three actions with owners |
| 42–45 min | Quick close: one word each, or a fist-of-five on how useful it was |
Running these online
You can run every format above on a whiteboard, but a retro tool saves you the setup. RetroLift has ready-made boards for common formats and themed templates, private writing, voting, action items and a kudos wall. It is free, made by AIYUN, and nobody has to sign up, which matters when you have a contractor or someone from another team joining for one session. If you want a warm-up before you start, the RetroLift team games are a quick way to get people talking.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a sprint retrospective take?
The Scrum Guide caps the retrospective at three hours for a one-month sprint and says it is usually shorter for shorter sprints. For a two-week sprint, 45 to 60 minutes works for most teams.
How often should you change the retrospective format?
Every two to four sprints is a good rhythm. Change it sooner if the retro feels flat or the team's situation changes.
Should managers attend sprint retrospectives?
Ask the team. If people speak less when a manager is in the room, run the retro without them and share the actions afterwards.
What is the best retrospective format for a new team?
Start with a plain format such as Start, Stop, Continue or Went well / To improve. New teams first need to learn that the retro is safe and that agreed actions actually happen. Once that habit is in place, try formats like Sailboat or Starfish; RetroLift, a free tool by AIYUN, has ready-made boards for them with no sign-up.
Disclosure: I build RetroLift and the other free Lift Apps tools mentioned here.
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