Futurespective Template: Start From Success and Work Back

A futurespective is a retrospective run from the future. The team pictures a moment six months on when the work went great, and explains why. Then it comes back to where we are today, names what could stop us, and agrees on our first steps. Use it at the start of a project, a quarter or a new team, when there's no past to review yet.

The four columns

Write the first column in the past tense. "We will communicate better" is a wish. "We demoed to support every second week, so launch held no surprises" is a reason. The past tense forces people to picture how it actually went.

Where it comes from. No single person is credited with the futurespective. The core move, standing at the end and looking back, appears in Luke Hohmann's Remember the Future, one of the games in his book Innovation Games (2007). Retromat lists Remember the Future as a retrospective activity and credits Hohmann. An early written description of a kickoff futurespective is Anders Laestadius's 2011 post on the Crisp blog.

When to use it (and when not to)

Use it when:

• a project, quarter or product bet is about to start and people describe "done" differently
• a new team needs a shared goal before it writes working agreements
• the team just finished a hard stretch and needs to look forward, not back
• you want stakeholders' idea of success on the board, in their words

Pick something else when:

• the plan is set and the question is what could go wrong. A pre-mortem finds more risks, because imagining failure makes people more candid.
• a sprint just ended and there's real history to review. Run What Went Well or Sailboat.
• people are anxious about the change itself, not the plan. Hopes and Fears gives those worries room first.

How to run it live (45 minutes)

1. Check what's still open. If this Team Room has run retros before, look at the Previous Retro and Old / Unresolved Items tabs in the Action Items panel. Carry over what still matters.
2. Set the scene. Name a date and say it plainly: "It's April 30. The new onboarding went great. We're celebrating." Name the goal so everyone imagines the same finish line.
3. Write why it went great. Set the shared timer for 10 minutes. One reason per note, past tense, about how the team worked as well as what it built.
4. Read and group. Drag similar reasons together. The biggest groups are the team's real definition of success.
5. Come back to today. Add facts about now, then obstacles. An obstacle that blocks no success reason can go.
6. Vote and plan. Dot vote on the obstacles, three votes each, and sort by Most Votes. For the top two, write first steps someone can start this week.

How to run it async over a sprint

Futurespectives usually happen at kickoff, but the writing works well async in the week before, away from the loudest voice in the room.

1. A week before kickoff: click Start New Retro, pick Futurespective with Try a different format, and post the scene as the first note in the first column: the date, the goal, and "it went great. Why?"
2. Over the next few days: everyone adds at least three success reasons. People can turn off Show Name, so a senior person's notes don't set the tone.
3. Midweek: the facilitator groups the reasons and asks each person for one fact under "Where we are today".
4. Two days before: everyone adds obstacles and votes.
5. The day before: read the CarrotIQ summary of each column and note the top obstacles for the call.
6. Kickoff day: a 20-minute call on the top obstacles and first steps. The board stays in the Team Room's history for later comparison.

More in how to run an async retrospective.

10 example prompts

Six months on, it went great. Why?

1. What did customers say when it launched?
2. What did we stop doing that made room for this?
3. Which decision in the first month mattered most?

Where we are today 4. What do we already have that gives us a head start? 5. What don't we know yet?

What could stop us 6. What's the most likely reason we wouldn't get there? 7. Who outside the team has to say yes?

Our first steps 8. What could we start this week that makes the success story more likely? 9. What's the smallest test of our riskiest assumption? 10. Who do we need to talk to before sprint 1?

For more question sets, see 60 sprint retrospective questions.

Facilitator tip and a common pitfall

Tip: make the future concrete before anyone writes. "Imagine success" gets vague notes. "It's April 30, the new onboarding has been live six weeks, and sign-up tickets are down by half" gets specific ones.

Pitfall: first steps that are really milestones. "Launch the beta" is the plan, not a first step. A first step starts within a week and has one owner: "Kemal sets up a test account with the payments provider by Thursday." If the last column reads like a roadmap, ask of each note: what happens on Monday?

How AI helps with this format

On Pro AI (and during the free trial), CarrotIQ takes care of the admin:

• Group names. Drag "we cut scope early" onto "we said no to the reporting add-on" and CarrotIQ names the group, for example "Early Scope Cuts". The names become a list of success factors.
• Summaries. The Sprint Summary summarizes each column and the whole board. Paste the first column's summary into the project brief as a starting definition of success.
• Suggested action items. CarrotIQ Suggest drafts an action from the notes, weighting the most-voted ones. Use it to turn the top obstacle into a first step, then edit and assign it.

Example action items

In a futurespective, the action items are the first steps. Each one should start within a week.

At your next retro, the Previous Retro tab lists these, and Old / Unresolved Items keeps anything still open. 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 Futurespective: 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. Before you invite anyone, write the scene, with a date and the goal, as the first note in the first column.

See pricing for plans.

Related formats

• Pre-mortem template: imagine failure instead, to find risks
• Hopes and Fears: when people need to voice expectations first
• Team charter template: turn the shared goal into working agreements
• Sailboat: check progress toward the goal mid-project
• More formats in Kickoff and planning
• All retrospective templates