Skip to content
Share
Explore
Facilitator
Retrospective Schemes
Retrospective Schemes
Scheme
Category
Description
colorScheme
Well Less Next Puzzle
4
🤩 What went well
Focus on what are you most proud of both from a technical or teamwork aspect.
1
😒 What went less well
Identify areas for improvement, gaps in processes or misalignment.
2
💡 What do we want to try next
Look towards the future, what exciting challenges do you want to solve?
3
🤔 What puzzles us
Identifies potential challenges, hurdles or barriers that should be addressed in a timely manner.
4
Start, Stop, Continue
3
🏁 Start
List ideas that the team should be doing but are not doing, innovative ideas worth discussing to address current problems.
1
🚫 Stop
List ideas that are not delivering results or might be driving people a little crazy
2
♾️ Continue
List ideas that are creating value or should not be dismissed yet because the outcome is not yet known.
3
Mad Sad Glad
3
😡 Mad
List the things that are driving you crazy. What is stopping you from performing at your best?
4
😭 Sad
What are some of the things that have disappointed you or that you wished could be improved?
2
😊 Glad
What makes you happy when you think about this project? What are the elements that you enjoy the most?
3
Anchors and Engines
2
⚓ Anchors
Identify areas that are holding the team back or slowing down the process.
2
⚙️ Engines
What is driving us forward? Share what is fueling, supporting, or inspiring you to move forward.
1
Sail Boat
5
🏝️ The Goal
What is the final destination for the team? What is our goal or vision? What does success mean?
0
🌬️ Wind
What is speeding us toward our goal? It could be internal and external support or personal motivation.
3
⚓ Anchor
What is slowing the team down? What would create drag and reduce velocity? It may be a dependency or policy. It could be a lack of process or one that is too complex. Some anchors may be necessary, and others need to be considered to see if they will be a constant drain on the team, making them less agile and achieving less progress.
2
🏔️ Iceberg
What do we need to look out for? What are the risks or potential pitfalls along the way? What does the team have to watch out for? There may be communication gaps, the response from competition or technical risk that could unhinge the team. Understanding what the risks are early can help the team think of ways to navigate around them or put signals in place as a warning as part of the next sprint.
4
🔆 Sun
What is making the team feel positive? What are the good things that can come out of this? These may be things that they look forward to and may include customer feedback, usage or improving the robustness of their infrastructure.
1
Four Ls
4
👍 Liked
What did people like about the last sprint/project? This could be anything from a process, an achievement, a particular team action or even a technology.
1
📖 Learned
What things did the team learn from experiments, testing, conversation and from working with each other. These are any new discoveries, points of interest or highlights.
4
🦴 Lacked
What seemed to be missing from the last iteration? On reflection, this might be something that was unclear or needed to be implemented to ensure that things continue to run smoothly.
2
🔍 Longed for
What is something that they wish existed or was possible that would ensure that the project would be successful.
3
Custom
4
Category A
Build your own
1
Category B
Build your own
2
Category C
Build your own
3
Category D
Build your own
4
Year Accomplishments
2
👏 What accomplishments are we most proud of
What were the biggest wins this past year
1
🤔 What could we have done better
What lessens did we learn
2
Drop Add Keep Improve
4
🗑️ Drop
What should we drop? These could be anything that is distracting the team from project outcomes, to time wasting activities.
2
➕ Add
What should we add? These are things that the team now believe should be added to what they do to replace the things that have been dropped. This may be something technical, a process, a resource or even a new process.
3
💾 Keep
What needs to continue to happen in order to ensure the project is a success?
1
⚡ Improve
What can we do better? Is there space for incremental changes?
4
High, Low, Weirdo
3
High
What’s going well? What’s the high light?
3
Low
What’s not going well? What’s the low light?
4
Weirdo
What’s weird, notable, surprising?
2
Roses & Thorns
4
🌹 Roses
1
🗡️Thorns
4
🌱 Buds
3
Retrospective Scheme Types
Type
Why you should use this retrospective technique
1
Well Less Next Puzzle
This agile retrospective technique asks 4 basic questions that gets the team thinking about the outcomes of the last sprint, and what actions they should focus on next. This exercise is short, sharp and documented meaning you can quickly make changes before it’s too late.
2
Start, Stop, Continue
Action-oriented retrospective style, generating an immediate list of practical ideas for continuous improvement. This exercise allows you to reallocate time and resources to where it matters the most.
3
Mad Sad Glad
Mad-Sad-Glad frames discussion around the emotional journey of by your team during the previous sprint, and is a great way to identify opportunities to improve team morale and job satisfaction.
4
Anchors and Engines
Anchors and Engines aims to identify factors within your team that are blocking or slowing it down, or speeding it up.
This retrospective format is best run when there has been issues with sticking to the critical path, issues in meeting sprint goals or changes in deadlines.
5
Sail Boat
This style of retrospective can be used when your team is having trouble completing a task. Having the ability to see what has been slowing you down and what you have achieved despite this, can be helpful in providing confidence when trying to complete a difficult task.
6
Four Ls
This approaches leverages both subjective (emotional) and objective (factual) experience to gather insight. This unique style aims to increase engagement and build trust inside the team.
7
High, Low, Weirdo
This schema can be used for any environment; personal or professional. It can help teams pause and reflect on what’s worth mentioning and how made you feel.
8
Roses & Thorns
Roses, thorns, and buds retrospective is a useful tool for reflecting on a project or experience. The roses represent the positive aspects and successes of the project, the thorns represent the challenges or obstacles faced, and the buds represent areas for growth or potential opportunities. This retrospective can help to identify what worked well, what didn't work, and what can be improved upon in future endeavors.
9
Custom
Build your own.
10
Year Accomplishments
This retrospective allows you to reflect over the course of the year.
11
Drop Add Keep Improve
DAKI is primarily built to focus on improvement after several Sprints working with the same team. However, if you don't work with Sprints, there's no need to worry. You can use DAKI to improve the quality of your projects as well.
This activity excels at finding areas for improvement based on the value perceived by each individual, where another activity would simply list out facts.
DAKI is also an excellent way to find good team practices to maintain while pointing out bad habits that should be gotten rid of.
Finally, DAKI will absolutely do the trick for a mid-project status (or project post-mortem). An event retrospective would also work well with DAKI. A self-reflection exercise, practical for taking stock of your own productivity and goals, can also be conducted using this technique.
There are no rows in this table
Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.
This is not the way.
Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (
CtrlP
) instead.