Kanban and Lean Retrospectives

How to choose

Start from the problem you're seeing.

• Work piles up somewhere. Kanban Flow asks where work got stuck and what waited too long, and ends with one change to the board, such as a lower limit on items in review.
• There's more to discuss than any set of columns covers. Lean Coffee lets people propose topics, vote, and talk through them in order, a few minutes each.
• Habits mostly work and need tuning. Starfish adds More of and Less of between Start and Stop, so you can turn a practice up or down without dropping it.
• Steps have piled up over time. DAKI has a Drop column, which makes it the best pick for removing work nobody needs anymore.
• You want problems turned into experiments. KPT pairs each problem with something to try, which fits the lean habit of small, testable changes.
• You only have five minutes. Plus / Delta works at the end of any meeting or after one piece of work ships.
• One problem keeps coming back. Follow it to a cause with the 5 Whys, or map what feeds it with the Fishbone.

Retros without sprints

Kanban teams often skip retros because nothing ever ends. Pick a cadence instead, such as every two weeks or once a month, and keep the board open in between. Retro Rabbit keeps it open until someone starts the review, so people can add a note the day a ticket sits blocked, not weeks later.

Retro Rabbit doesn't connect to your Kanban tool or show flow metrics, so bring the numbers yourself: a screenshot of the cumulative flow chart, the three items that took longest, or how many items sat in review at once. Talk about where work waited, not who was slow.

Keep each change small enough to check. "No more than three items in review" can be checked at the next retro. "Improve flow" can't. Each change becomes an action item with an owner, and it shows up under Previous Retro in the Action Items panel next time, so the team can decide to keep it, adjust it or drop it. That loop is the whole point of a lean retro. More on writing changes that hold up in retrospective action items that actually get done.