Quick Retrospective Formats

How to choose

Start with how much time you really have.

Fifteen minutes. Pick Plus / Delta when you want one change and nothing else: what worked, what to change, done. Working / Not Working asks the same thing in plainer words, which helps with a team's very first retro. If you mainly want to know how people are doing, Happy, Meh, Sad or the Weather Report gives you a mood read in a few minutes. One Word works when 15 people are on the call and nobody has time for long notes.

Thirty minutes. Pick Start Stop Continue when the team roughly knows what's wrong and needs to decide on behavior. Pick KPT when you want each problem to leave the room as an experiment in the Try column. Plus, Minus, Interesting fits when you're judging one recent change, such as a new on-call rotation, rather than the whole sprint. Good, Bad, Ugly gives the worst moment its own column, so it gets named instead of softened. Rose, Bud, Thorn is gentler and has room for ideas that are just starting. Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down adds Ideas and Kudos, so it feels familiar and ends on praise.

Keeping a 15-minute retro useful

Short retros fail in a predictable way: twelve minutes of writing, then a rushed decision. A few habits prevent that.

• Write before the meeting. Open the board on day one and ask people to add notes as things happen. Then the meeting goes to talking, not typing.
• Spend the first minute on last time. Open the Previous Retro tab in the Action Items panel. If last retro's item didn't happen, that's your first topic.
• Cap the discussion. Set the board's timer, give everyone two or three dot votes, and talk only about the top two notes.
• Leave with one action item. One item with an owner beats four with none. See retrospective action items that actually get done.
• Notice when quick isn't enough. If the same thorn or delta shows up three retros in a row, a short format is hiding a bigger problem. Book 45 minutes and use What Went Well or the 5 Whys.

On Pro AI (and during the free trial), CarrotIQ writes a short summary of each column, which helps the people who missed the call catch up in a minute.