Retrospective templates that end in decisions

Full guides with examples

More formats worth rotating in

Full guides for these are on the way. The ones marked one-click are board templates in the create-board dialog; the rest run on a blank board with your own column names.

How to choose a sprint retrospective template

Match the format to what the team needs right now. If retros end in vague agreement, pick an action-oriented format like Start, Stop, Continue. If the sprint was rough and people need to be heard first, choose a reflective format like Rose, Bud, Thorn or Mad Sad Glad. If the same problems keep coming back, run Keep, Problem, Try and review the experiments at the next session. If the team is buried in meetings, tools, and rituals nobody has audited, Open the Box works through them item by item.

When the horizon is longer than a sprint, change the shape of the session. A release retrospective reconstructs a timeline of the whole release before anyone writes an opinion, so the final week does not stand in for two months of work. The sailboat puts the goal, the tailwinds, the drag, and the rocks ahead on one board — it is the common format that asks what is coming, not only what already happened. And when the team knows its problems perfectly well and simply needs to talk, Lean Coffee lets it propose topics, vote, and discuss them in timeboxes instead of filling in columns again.

And when there is nothing to look back on yet — a new project, a new team, a migration about to start — point the session forward instead. A futurespective imagines the outcome and works backwards to the enablers and risks; hopes and concerns gets you most of the same signal in twenty minutes. Whatever you pick, rotate after five sprints — familiarity is comfortable, but a new format surfaces new signal.

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