Retrospective
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Actionable retrospective ideas that
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The Pac-man Retrospective

Kids of the 90s, this format is for you. You can combine business and pleasure with your team and use the Pac-man format in your upcoming retro to keep the meeting focused and relevant. 

Pre-Mortem Retrospective

The Pre-Mortem retrospective allows team members to predict challenges by imagining the worst-case scenario of the project failure. Then, tracing the events that led to it by going backward in time to determine the roadblocks. 

Tree Retrospective

One of the tools from popular Agile coach and author Lyssa Adkins is referred to as the High Performance Tree, a visual tool that effectively illustrates the environment required for Agile teams to work at their best. Use the format for your next retrospective!

Rose, Thorn, Bud Retrospective

The Rose, Thorn, Bud retrospective format is a wonderful way for a process facilitator to balance out optimistic views with negative views inside the team and encourage the team to arrive at actionable next steps for the sprint to come.

Peaks and Valleys Retrospective

The Peaks and Valleys retrospective is one of the most insightful retrospective formats if you want to see how your team feels about the last sprint. This template provides a visual language for participants to share individual views on the ups and downs of their last iteration of work.

Six Thinking Hats Retrospective

Edward De Bono, a creative thinker, has devoted his life to inventing ways to improve the process of thinking as a group. One of the tools he came up with is the Six Thinking Hats retrospective format – a simple exercise to help people choose their next steps more wisely and mindfully.

KALM Retrospective

The KALM – Keep, Add, More, Less retrospective is a popular retrospective meeting activity in the Agile world. This sprint retro format is focused on boosting conversations in the team about current, ongoing initiatives and what value they are bringing to the process as a whole.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Retrospective

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly retrospective template boosts conversations about team improvements with a cinematic touch.

Hot Air Balloon Retrospective

The Hot Air Balloon Retro is a simple activity to help an Agile team identify what allowed them move faster and what slowed them down over the course of their last working sprint together through the lens of a hot air balloon ride.

Pleasure and Gain Retrospective

The Pleasure and Gain retrospective format is a great way to start the conversation about topics like team dynamics, dips in productivity, new additions to the team and other team-level circumstances to determine how they are affecting each team member.

Speed Car Retrospective

The Speed Car – Abyss retrospective is a forward-thinking exercise, created by Paulo Caroli. It is a mix of retrospective and futurespective, which will help your team uncover risks. It’s a popular retro template for Scrum Masters and Agile teams that want to find an axis of improvement.

Sad Mad Glad Retrospective

Mad Sad Glad is an Agile retro format that allows teams to discuss the feelings and emotions that surfaced over the course of the last sprint. This technique has the potential to improve emotional well-being by encouraging team members to focus on how to create a positive environment and boost morale. 

Spider Web Retrospective

This exercise will help you understand what abilities are important to you as an individual contributor, how your team rates against them, and what improvements you would like to make over the course of the next sprint as investments in your growth. 

Three Little Pigs Retrospective

A retrospective board built around the three little pigs retro format will have three columns corresponding to the three types of houses made of different materials from the story. 

Start Stop Continue Retrospective

Among the many retro formats out there (and there really are many), the Start Stop Continue retrospective format is one of the most popular. It's the retrospective format that represents the most accessible entry point into integrating this vital meeting into your routine.

Sailboat Retrospective

The Sailboat is a fun way of doing retrospectives by looking at your work as part of a sea journey.

Starfish Retrospective

The Starfish Retrospective is also known as the starfish technique, starfish method for sprint retrospectives and other variations. It’s a simple and powerful tool to boost visualization, anchor analytical skills, and improve decision-making during retrospective meetings.

Plus-Minus-Delta Retrospective

If you prefer to keep your retros nice and simple, Plus - Minus - Delta might be just the thing for you. It is an easy-to-apply retro format that you can set up right away without too much effort.

Fishbone Retrospective

One of the most popular methods for causal analysis, the Ishikawa diagram (also known as the Fishbone), has been adapted by Agile teams in a variety of contexts to support a focused team discussions about the causes of negative symptoms that are affecting the team. 

WARP Retrospective

To help teams avoid the unproductive slump of boring retrospectives that focus on blame rather than solutions, belgian Scrum Master and analyst, Nick Oostvogel developed the WARP (or WRAP) matrix. 

4 Ls Retrospective

Not all retro formats were built to encourage the team to bring their emotions to light. But there is one technique that has been proven to strike a balance between what is objective and what is based on team sentiment: the four Ls retro. 

DAKI Retrospective

DAKI stands for Drop-Add-Keep-Improve. It is an intuitive retrospective format that allows you to look at your work from a perspective similar to managing inventory.

Wish and Wonder Retrospective

Adapted from the “I Like, I Wish, How to” process, originally described in resources from the Stanford Design School, the “I Like, I Wish, I Wonder” retrospective template is a quick way to get constructive feedback from your core team. 

Lean Coffee Retrospective

Lean Coffee is one of the most popular and beloved retro formats. If you want to improve your team communication or just look for new, fun ideas for your retrospective meetings, this technique will contribute greatly to your team’s agility. It aims at building a structured agenda and outlining the most important takeaways from the last team’s iteration. 

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