On this page (10 sections)
A quarterly retrospective steps back from sprint detail and looks at the last three months as a whole. It has four columns: Wins this quarter, What was hard, What we learned, and Focus for next quarter. It catches patterns you can't see sprint by sprint, like the same blocker in four retros, and ends with two or three focus areas, not twenty fixes.
The four columns
| Column | What goes here | Example note |
|---|---|---|
| 🏆 Wins this quarter | Results you're proud of, measured against the quarter's goals | "Every customer is on the new billing system, with zero failed invoices." |
| 😓 What was hard | What cost the most across the quarter, not just last week | "About five weeks went to unplanned work from the data migration." |
| 📘 What we learned | Lessons you'd pass on to a team starting the same work | "Sizing migrations by table count was useless. Dependencies were what mattered." |
| 🎯 Focus for next quarter | Two or three areas to put effort into, in order | "Get p95 API latency under 300 ms before we add new endpoints." |
Ask "was it true all quarter?" "The deploy broke on Tuesday" is a sprint note. "Deploys broke in five of six sprints" is a quarterly one.
Where it comes from. No single person is credited with a quarterly retro format. The four columns are the usual retro questions stretched over a quarter. Long look-backs are where retrospectives started: Norm Kerth's 2001 book Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Reviews is about reviewing whole projects, and his Prime Directive is still read at the start of many retros.
In Retro Rabbit
The Quarterly Retrospective template in Retro Rabbit
Pick Quarterly Retrospective from the format library when you create a Team Room (or later in its Settings) and the board starts with its four columns. Your team adds notes during the sprint, with or without their name shown, then votes on what to talk about.
Quarterly Retrospective · Sprint #14
Example notes
Wins this quarter
- Every customer is on the new billing system with zero failed invoices2 votes
- New devs ship their first PR in four days now, down from two weeks4 votes
What was hard
- About five weeks went to unplanned work from the data migration5 votes
- Flaky tests came up in four of our six sprint retros3 votes
What we learned
- Sizing migrations by table count was useless, dependencies mattered3 votes
- Design needs to be in the kickoff, not the second sprint2 votes
Focus for next quarter
- Get p95 API latency under 300 ms before we add new endpoints1 vote
- Finish the reporting rewrite we started in July1 vote
- Wins this quarter
- What was hard
- What we learned
- Focus for next quarter
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When to use it (and when not to)
Use it when:
- a quarter is ending and planning for the next one starts soon
- sprint retros keep producing small fixes, but the big problems never move
- goals or the team changed mid-quarter, and you want to see what that cost
- product and design shape the work but rarely join sprint retros
Pick something else when:
- the quarter ran on OKRs and you need to score them. Use an OKR Review.
- it's the last quarter of the year. An End of Year retro covers the whole year.
- nobody remembers what happened when. Rebuild the quarter first with a Timeline.
How to run it live (60 minutes)
| Time | Step |
|---|---|
| 0–5 min | Review action items still open from the quarter |
| 5–12 min | Walk through the quarter's goals and what happened |
| 12–25 min | Silent writing in all four columns |
| 25–32 min | Group and name |
| 32–35 min | Dot vote: four votes each |
| 35–50 min | Discuss what was hard and what you learned |
| 50–60 min | Agree two or three focus areas, with owners |
- Start with what's still open. In the Action Items panel, Previous Retro shows the last sprint's actions and Old / Unresolved Items shows everything older. In a quarterly retro, that list is a finding in itself. For each item: do it, drop it, or fold it into a focus area.
- Walk the quarter. Put the goals on screen, then go month by month: releases, incidents, people joining or leaving.
- Write silently. Set the shared timer for 13 minutes. Ask for at least one note in What we learned, usually the thinnest column.
- Group and vote. Expect bigger groups than usual. Set dot voting to four votes each, then sort by Most Votes.
- Discuss hard things and lessons together. For each top group, ask what you learned from it. The answer often names the focus area.
- Choose focus areas. Two or three, in order. Each gets an owner and a first action for the first sprint of the new quarter.
How to run it async over the last sprint
The simplest setup is to make the quarter's last sprint retro your quarterly one.
- When the last sprint starts: click Start New Retro, then Try a different format, and pick Quarterly Retrospective before anyone adds notes. The facilitator shares the quarter's goals with the team.
- First week: everyone adds notes about the whole quarter. Urgent sprint issues go under What was hard, since this board replaces the sprint retro.
- Mid-sprint: if What we learned or Focus is empty, the facilitator asks each person for one note in each.
- Two days before the end: everyone votes.
- The day before: the facilitator groups notes and reads the CarrotIQ Sprint Summary.
- Retro day: keep a live 30 to 40 minutes for choosing focus areas. They shape a whole quarter, so they're worth a conversation. The next retro goes back to the Team Room's usual columns.
More in how to run an async retrospective.
12 example prompts
Wins this quarter
- Which result from this quarter would you show a new hire?
- What did we ship that customers noticed?
- Which goal did we hit, and what made it work?
What was hard 4. What kept coming up in our sprint retros this quarter? 5. Where did unplanned work come from? 6. What did we start and not finish?
What we learned 7. What would you tell a team starting the work we did? 8. Which assumption from the start of the quarter turned out wrong? 9. What do we do better now than in the first sprint of the quarter?
Focus for next quarter 10. If we could fix only one thing next quarter, what would it be? 11. What should we stop, to make room for the focus areas? 12. How will we know at the next quarterly retro that it worked?
Facilitator tip and a common pitfall
Tip: do the reading before the meeting. Open each sprint retro from the quarter in the Team Room's sprint list and write down the three themes that came up most. Show them next to the goals while the team writes. People remember the last two weeks; your list covers the other ten.
Pitfall: a focus column with nine items. Every note in the last column feels important, and teams try to keep them all. Nine focus areas means no focus. Keep two or three and leave the rest on the board. If one still matters next quarter, it'll come back with more votes.
How AI helps with this format
On Pro AI (and during the free trial), CarrotIQ takes care of the reading and admin:
- Summaries. The best prep is the Sprint Summary of every retro in the quarter, in the Team Room's sprint list: six short summaries instead of six boards. The quarterly board gets its own summary too, worth sharing with whoever plans the next quarter.
- Group names. Groups get big. Drag "migration ate sprint 4" onto "unplanned schema work" and CarrotIQ names the group, for example "Migration Overruns".
- Suggested action items. CarrotIQ Suggest drafts an action from the most-voted notes. Use it for the first-sprint action under each focus area, then edit it and assign an owner.
Example action items
| Note | Action item |
|---|---|
| Hard: "Five weeks lost to unplanned migration work" | "Before the next migration, Sara writes a one-page dependency map and the team sizes the work from it. Next quarter, we check how far off the estimate was." |
| Unresolved: "Six actions open since the start of the quarter" | "Omar closes or drops each one in this meeting. From now on, any action open for two retros is discussed first." |
| Focus: "Get p95 API latency under 300 ms" | "Ines adds a p95 latency chart to the team dashboard in sprint 1, and the team reviews the number at every sprint retro this quarter." |
| Learned: "Design joined the onboarding work too late" | "Lena invites design to every epic kickoff next quarter. At mid-quarter she reports how many kickoffs design attended." |
See retrospective action items that actually get done.
Use this template in Retro Rabbit
- Start a 14-day free trial. No card is needed.
- For one retro, click Try a different format in Start New Retro and pick Quarterly Retrospective: 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.
- Start the retro with this format at the beginning of the quarter's last sprint, so the team has a whole sprint to add notes.
See pricing for plans.
Related formats
- OKR Review: when the quarter had OKRs to score
- End of Year: the last retro of the year
- Timeline: rebuild the quarter in order when memories blur
- SWOT: when the next quarter needs a strategy, not just focus areas
- More formats in Project retrospectives
- All retrospective templates
Frequently asked questions
What is a quarterly retrospective?
A retro that looks back over a whole quarter instead of one sprint. The team lists the quarter's wins, what was hard, what it learned, and two or three focus areas for the next quarter.
How is a quarterly retrospective different from a sprint retrospective?
A sprint retro fixes what happened in the last two weeks. A quarterly retro looks for patterns across six or so sprints: the blocker that came up in four retros, the goal that slipped twice. Its output is a short list of focus areas, not a pile of small fixes.
How do you prepare for a quarterly retrospective?
Collect the quarter's goals, the list of what shipped, and the action items still open. Then read each sprint retro from the quarter, or its Sprint Summary if you use CarrotIQ, and note the themes that keep coming back.
Who should attend a quarterly retrospective?
The whole team, plus the people who shaped the quarter but don't come to every sprint retro, such as the product manager, designer or engineering manager. In Retro Rabbit everyone joins with an account, by email invite or a join link.
How long does a quarterly retrospective take?
About 60 minutes. Prep matters more than meeting length: if the facilitator has read the quarter's retros beforehand, an hour is enough.
What's the difference between a quarterly retrospective and an OKR review?
An OKR review scores each objective and key result. A quarterly retro asks how the team worked while chasing them. If the quarter ran on OKRs, use an OKR retrospective for the scoring and this format for the rest.
Run this retro in Retro Rabbit
Your team adds notes during the sprint, CarrotIQ groups and summarizes them and suggests action items, and unfinished items carry into the next retro.
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