DAKI Retrospective Template: Drop, Add, Keep and Improve

DAKI asks the team to sort its practices into Drop, Add, Keep and Improve. It's a retro for pruning: alongside what to try, protect and fix, the team names what no longer earns its place. Teams that have been adding process for a year or two get the most from it, because Drop is the question other formats rarely ask.

The four columns

Drop vs Improve is where the debate happens. Ask what the practice is for. If that goal still matters and the practice is just clumsy, it's Improve. If the goal went away (the stakeholder left, the risk is gone), it's Drop.

Where it comes from. No single person is credited with DAKI. Three of its columns appear in a "Keep, Drop, Add" dot-voting activity on Retromat, which credits Esther Derby and Diana Larsen's book Agile Retrospectives (2006). The Improve column and the DAKI name came later, and nobody is credited with that step.

When to use it (and when not to)

Use it when:

• people complain about overhead: too many meetings, checklists or channels
• after a reorg, a team merger or a tool change, when old habits may be leftovers
• as a cleanup every quarter or so, even for a team that's doing fine
• you want every column to end in a decision

Pick something else when:

• one problem needs a root cause. DAKI jumps to fixes. Use 5 Whys or a fishbone diagram.
• trust is low. A Drop note about a practice someone introduced can feel personal. Run Mad Sad Glad first.
• the practice should stay but at a different dose. KALM has Less and More for that.

How to run it live (30 minutes)

1. Check what you added before. Open the Action Items panel and look at the Previous Retro and Old / Unresolved Items tabs. Something you added three sprints ago that nobody uses is today's best Drop candidate.
2. Write Drop first. Set the timer for seven minutes and ask everyone to spend the first two on Drop, before moving to the other columns. Drop is the column teams skip. The All Topics menu lets each person show just one column.
3. Group duplicates. "Too many meetings" and "Wednesday sync" belong together.
4. Vote. Use dot voting and sort by Most Votes.
5. Discuss Drop and Improve. For each Drop note, ask what would break if you stopped tomorrow. If nobody can name anything, drop it on the spot. For Improve, ask for the smallest fix that would make people stop skipping it.
6. Confirm owners for drops too. Someone has to cancel the invite, remove the checklist step or tell the team that relied on the report.

How to run it async over a sprint

Drop notes are the easiest to lose. You notice the pointless meeting while you're in it, and by retro day you've forgotten. An open board fixes that.

1. Day 1: after the last retro, click Start New Retro so the board is open all sprint (pick DAKI there with Try a different format if your room uses other columns). Post one Drop note yourself, so people see it's welcome.
2. During the sprint: add notes as they happen. If you'd rather post a Drop note about a colleague's favorite ritual without your name shown, turn off Show Name in your profile first.
3. Mid-sprint: look at Drop. If it's empty, ask at standup: "What did you do this week only because it's the rule?"
4. Two days before the end: everyone votes.
5. The day before: the facilitator groups duplicates and reads the CarrotIQ Sprint Summary for each column.
6. Retro day: a 15-minute call to confirm drops and Improve owners. Or skip the call: post each top Drop item as "dropping this next sprint unless someone objects by Thursday". Silence works as a yes here, because a drop is easy to undo.

More in how to run an async retrospective.

10 example prompts

Drop

1. What do we do only because we always have?
2. Which meeting would nobody notice if it vanished?
3. Which channel, dashboard or report hasn't been opened in a month?

Add 4. What would have saved the most time this sprint? 5. What do new joiners ask about that we have no answer for?

Keep 6. What would you fight for if someone proposed dropping it? 7. Which recent change has already paid off?

Improve 8. What's right in principle but painful in practice? 9. Which step do people skip because it's awkward, not because it's useless? 10. What's half-finished: a doc, a script, a checklist?

Facilitator tip and a common pitfall

Tip: ask "what would break?" It's the one question every Drop note needs. If nothing would break, drop it. If something would, the note is probably an Improve in disguise: the goal matters, the method doesn't work. Moving it to Improve is a good outcome, not a defeat.

Pitfall: dropping without telling anyone. A dropped meeting needs a calendar cancellation. A dropped checklist step needs the template changed. The other team that read your weekly status report needs to hear it's gone. Give every drop an owner, the same as an Add.

How AI helps with this format

On Pro AI (and during the free trial), CarrotIQ handles the admin around the board:

• Group names. Drop columns fill with versions of the same complaint. Drag "Monday pre-planning" onto "planning prep is a second planning" and CarrotIQ names the group, for example "Planning Overhead".
• Summaries. The Sprint Summary covers each column plus the whole retro. The Drop summary is a ready-made list to share when a process change needs sign-off from outside the team.
• Suggested action items. CarrotIQ Suggest drafts an action from the notes, weighting the most-voted ones and skipping actions you already have. It helps most with Improve notes, where the fix isn't obvious yet.

Example action items

The Previous Retro tab shows these at the start of your next retro. See retrospective action items that actually get done.

Use this template in Retro Rabbit

1. Start a 14-day free trial. No card is needed.
2. For one retro, click Try a different format in Start New Retro and pick DAKI: it applies to that retro only, and your Team Room keeps its usual columns. To make it the room's format, choose it under "Browse all formats" when you create your Team Room, or later in the Team Room's Settings.
3. Write the first Drop note yourself on day one. People copy what the first note looks like.

See pricing for plans.

Related formats

• KALM: when the amount is the problem, not the practice
• Starfish: five columns, with More of and Less of between Start and Stop
• Start Stop Continue: three columns, for a shorter retro
• Plus / Delta: a 15-minute check when you don't need a cleanup
• More formats in Kanban and lean
• All retrospective templates