Plus Delta Retrospective Template: What Worked, What to Change

Plus/Delta is one of the shortest retrospectives: two columns, What worked (the plus) and What to change (the delta), and about 15 minutes. Delta is the symbol for change, so every note in the second column says what to do differently, not just what went wrong. Use it for a quiet sprint, a short sprint, or at the end of any meeting, release or event you'll run again.

The two columns

Delta isn't minus. "Planning ran long" is a complaint. "Bring no more than eight refined stories to planning" is a delta. A delta is already half an action item; a column of complaints turns a 15-minute retro into a 45-minute one. If a note doesn't say what to do differently, ask its author to rewrite it before anyone votes.

Where it comes from. No single person is credited with it, and the published accounts differ. Lean construction writers trace it to Boeing in the early 1980s or to the meeting facilitation work of Michael Doyle and David Straus, authors of How to Make Meetings Work (1976). Healthcare teams use it to debrief simulations, and a 2021 paper in Advances in Simulation notes that the US Army uses a version of the same approach in its After Action Reviews.

When to use it (and when not to)

Use it when:

• you have 15 minutes, or the sprint was quiet and a longer format would feel padded
• a planning session, demo, workshop or release just ended and you'll run it again
• the team is new to retros. Two columns ask very little.
• you want to close a longer retro with a quick check on the retro itself

Pick something else when:

• a lot happened. Two columns flatten a hard sprint; use What Went Well to get the full picture.
• something broke and you need to know why. Plus/Delta doesn't dig; use 5 Whys.
• the same deltas come back sprint after sprint. Use KPT to turn each one into an experiment you check.

How to run it live (15 minutes)

1. Check last time. Open the Previous Retro and Old / Unresolved Items tabs in the Action Items panel. For each item: done, still going or dropped? Keep it under two minutes.
2. Write silently. Set the shared timer for four minutes. Ask for at least one plus and one delta from everyone.
3. Rewrite. Read the deltas aloud. Anything that's a complaint gets rewritten by its author as a change.
4. Vote. Spend votes on deltas; pluses don't need a decision. Sort by Most Votes.
5. Discuss two deltas. For each, ask what the smallest version of the change is and who will do it.
6. Leave with one action. Plus/Delta works because it's small. One change per retro is enough.

How to run it async over a sprint

Plus/Delta notes are short, so it's one of the easiest formats to run fully async.

1. Day 1: in Retro Rabbit, the next board is ready once someone clicks Start New Retro after the last retro.
2. During the sprint: when something works, add a plus. When something should change, add a delta saying how. Use the board, Quick Notes on the Team Room page, or /retro your note if the team uses Slack.
3. Mid-sprint: the facilitator reads the deltas. If one can be done now, like moving a meeting or fixing a doc, do it now instead of waiting for the retro.
4. Two days before the end: everyone votes.
5. The day before: the facilitator groups duplicates and reads the CarrotIQ Sprint Summary.
6. Retro day: skip the meeting. The facilitator posts the top delta with a proposed owner, and the owner accepts or suggests a smaller version by end of day. Keep a 10-minute call for sprints where the top delta is contested.

More in how to run an async retrospective.

10 example prompts

What worked

1. What would you do exactly the same way next time?
2. What saved us time this sprint?
3. Which decision turned out to be right?
4. Who helped you, and how?
5. What went better than last time?

What to change 6. What one change would have made this sprint easier? 7. If we ran this again tomorrow, what would you do differently? 8. Where did we lose an hour we didn't need to? 9. What should we prepare earlier next time? 10. Which rule or habit should we change, and to what?

More sets in 60 sprint retrospective questions.

Facilitator tip and a common pitfall

Tip: read the pluses aloud first. It's tempting to go straight to the deltas. Spend one minute on the pluses; they tell you what to protect when you make the change: if "demoing on staging" is a plus, the fix for a long demo shouldn't be "go back to slides".

Pitfall: the same delta every sprint. If "planning runs long" shows up three retros in a row, the change isn't happening, and two columns are too shallow to find out why. Give the next retro's whole discussion to that one delta: ask why it keeps coming back before agreeing on another change.

How AI helps with this format

On Pro AI (and during the free trial), CarrotIQ handles the admin, which matters most when there's no meeting:

• Group names. Drag "demo ran long" onto "too many stories in the demo" and CarrotIQ names the group, for example "Demo Length".
• Summaries. The Sprint Summary covers each column plus the whole retro. In a fully async retro, the delta summary is what you share with the team instead of a meeting.
• Suggested action items. CarrotIQ Suggest drafts an action from the notes, weighting the most-voted ones and skipping actions you already have. Deltas are already written as changes, which gives the draft good material. Edit it and assign an owner.

Example action items

Next retro, the Previous Retro tab lists these; older open ones sit under Old / Unresolved Items. More in 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. Pick Plus / Delta from the format library: choose "Browse all formats" when you create your Team Room, or later in the Team Room's Settings.
3. In the Team Room's Settings, set dot voting to two votes per person. With two columns and a short retro, more votes just spread thin.

See pricing for plans.

Related formats

• KPT: when changes need to be tested as experiments
• Plus, Minus, Interesting: adds a column for things that are neither good nor bad
• Start Stop Continue: splits the delta into things to start and things to stop
• What Went Well: when the sprint needs more than two columns
• More formats in Quick retrospectives
• All retrospective templates