How long should a retrospective be?
A sprint retrospective should run about 45 minutes per week of sprint — so 90 minutes for a two-week sprint, 45 for a one-week sprint — with a hard ceiling of three hours for a one-month sprint. That ceiling comes from the Scrum Guide; the per-week figure is the working heuristic that falls out of it.
The length is the easy part. The reason retrospectives overrun is almost never the timebox — it is that no one decided in advance how the time would be spent, so the session spends fifty minutes gathering data and four minutes deciding what to do. Set your sprint length and team size below and this calculator returns a minute-by-minute agenda across the five phases, sized for your team, ready to copy into the calendar invite.
Set the stage
0–9 min · 9 minGet everyone talking early and state the Prime Directive. A person who has not spoken in the first five minutes usually stays quiet for the whole hour.
Gather data
9–32 min · 23 minSilent writing first. Everyone adds cards privately so the loudest opinion does not anchor the board before the quiet signals arrive.
Generate insights
32–58 min · 26 minGroup the cards into themes, then vote. Discuss only the top two or three — a retro that touches every card decides nothing.
Decide what to do
58–81 min · 23 minTurn the top themes into actions with a named owner and a due date. No owner means it did not happen.
Close
81–90 min · 9 minRead the actions back, check how the session felt, and end on time. Ending late is the fastest way to lose attendance next sprint.
At 7 people, run the gather-data phase as silent writing rather than a spoken round-robin. In a serial round the first three speakers use the whole phase and the quieter half of the team contributes nothing.
Paste it into the calendar invite so everyone sees the timeboxes.
How it’s calculated
Retro length ≈ 45 minutes × sprint weeks, plus ~4 minutes per person above six, capped at 3 hours
- 45 minutes per sprint week
- The proportional reading of the Scrum Guide’s three-hour ceiling for a one-month sprint. Two-week sprints land at 90 minutes.
- Team size allowance
- Larger groups need more time for the same conversation, but not linearly — past about ten people the answer is a different format, not more minutes.
- Five phases
- Set the stage, gather data, generate insights, decide what to do, close — the structure from Derby and Larsen’s Agile Retrospectives.
Worked example: A 90-minute retro for a seven-person team
Two-week sprint, seven people. The calculator recommends 98 minutes for a group this size, but the team only holds a 90-minute slot — so it splits the 90 they have across the five phases, in the proportions a well-run session actually uses.
| Set the stage | 9 min — check-in, Prime Directive |
|---|---|
| Gather data | 23 min — silent writing, then post |
| Generate insights | 26 min — group into themes, vote |
| Decide what to do | 23 min — owners and due dates |
| Close | 9 min — read actions back, check the mood |
| Discussion airtime per person | 7 minutes |
| Silent writing needed? | Yes — seven people |
The number worth staring at is the airtime: 7 minutes each across the two discussion phases. That is why silent writing is not optional at seven people — if you run gather-data as a spoken round-robin instead, three people will use the whole phase and the rest will contribute nothing. The phase that gets cut when a retro overruns is always "decide what to do", which is the only phase that changes anything.
Reference table
Recommended retrospective length by sprint length and team size, in minutes. The Scrum Guide caps a one-month sprint retrospective at 180 minutes.
| Sprint length | ≤5 people | 7 people | 10 people |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 week | 45 min | 53 min | 65 min |
| 2 weeks | 90 min | 98 min | 110 min |
| 3 weeks | 135 min | 143 min | 155 min |
| 4 weeks | 180 min | 180 min | 180 min |
How long should a sprint retrospective be?
Ninety minutes for a two-week sprint, forty-five for a one-week sprint, and no more than three hours for a one-month sprint. The Scrum Guide states the three-hour maximum for monthly sprints and says shorter sprints usually need less; 45 minutes per sprint week is the proportional reading most teams settle on. Add a little for larger groups. If your two-week retro habitually runs 30 minutes, that is not efficiency — it is a session that is gathering data and skipping the deciding.
Why does the retrospective always overrun?
Because the phases are not timeboxed individually. Gathering data is the most comfortable phase — nobody has to commit to anything — so it expands to fill whatever is available, and the session reaches the decision phase with eight minutes left. The fix is mechanical: put a visible timer on each phase and move on when it ends, even mid-sentence. Teams find this uncomfortable for about two sprints and then never go back.
Does team size change how long a retro needs?
Up to a point. Going from five people to ten adds roughly 20 minutes for the same conversation, which is why the allowance above is not linear. Past about ten people, more minutes stop helping — with a 90-minute session and twelve people, each person has under five minutes of discussion airtime, and the format itself has to change: silent writing, dot voting to pick two themes, and small breakout groups rather than one conversation. If you cannot split the group, accept that the retro will surface fewer topics and go deeper on them.
How much of the retro should go to actions?
About a quarter of the total, and it should be protected time rather than whatever is left. In a 90-minute session that is roughly 22 minutes to turn the top two or three themes into actions with a named owner and a due date. The test of a retrospective is not how much was discussed, it is how much is different next sprint — a session that generated rich discussion and no owned actions has entertained the team rather than improved anything.
Where this number misleads you
- Timeboxing the session but not the phases. The total holds while "decide what to do" gets squeezed into the last five minutes.
- Running gather-data as a spoken round-robin above five people. The first three speakers consume the phase and quiet team members contribute nothing.
- Discussing every card. Vote, take the top two or three, and let the rest go. A retro that touches everything decides nothing.
- Booking the retro immediately after the sprint review with no gap. People arrive still arguing about scope and the first phase is spent decompressing.
- Ending late. Overrunning is the fastest way to lose attendance, and attendance is the only thing keeping the ceremony honest.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a sprint retrospective be?+
Around 45 minutes per week of sprint: 45 minutes for a one-week sprint, 90 minutes for a two-week sprint, and a maximum of three hours for a one-month sprint. The three-hour ceiling comes from the Scrum Guide. Add roughly four minutes per person above a team of six, up to that same ceiling.
Is a 30-minute retrospective long enough?+
For a one-week sprint with a small team, it can be — but only if the phases are tightly run and the team is genuinely deciding actions rather than just sharing observations. For a two-week sprint, 30 minutes almost always means the session is skipping the decision phase, which is the only part that changes anything. If time pressure is real, shorten the data gathering with a pre-filled board rather than cutting the actions.
What are the five phases of a retrospective?+
Set the stage, gather data, generate insights, decide what to do, and close — the structure from Esther Derby and Diana Larsen’s Agile Retrospectives. Set the stage gets everyone talking early; gather data collects observations, ideally in writing and privately; generate insights groups them into themes and votes; decide what to do turns the top themes into owned actions; close reads the actions back and ends on time.
How long should each phase of the retrospective take?+
As a proportion of the total: about 10% to set the stage, 25% to gather data, 30% to generate insights, 25% to decide what to do, and 10% to close. In a 90-minute session that is 9, 23, 26, 23 and 9 minutes. The proportions matter more than the absolute numbers — the common failure is letting data gathering take 50% and leaving the decision phase with whatever remains.
The numbers say what happened. The retro decides what changes.
FocusRetro gives the same team a calm board for honest feedback, blind voting, and action items that survive until next sprint.
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More agile calculators
Related guides
How to run a sprint retrospective
The full step-by-step guide behind this agenda, with facilitation scripts for each phase.
Retrospective templates
Start Stop Continue, Rose Bud Thorn and more — formats that fit the agenda above.
Remote and async retrospectives
How the timings change when the team is distributed across time zones.