Start Stop Continue Retrospective Template

A Start Stop Continue retrospective asks the team three things: what should we start doing, what should we stop doing, and what should we continue doing? It skips the analysis and goes straight to behavior, so it's the fastest format to turn into action items. It works best when the team already has a rough sense of what's wrong and needs to decide what to change.

The three columns

Write behaviors, not wishes. "Better communication" isn't a Start item; nobody can start it on Monday. "Post a one-line update in the team channel when a PR has waited more than a day" is. If a note can't be done or not done, ask the author to rewrite it.

Nobody has a reliable claim to inventing the format. Managers use it for one-on-one feedback as well as team retros, which is part of why so many people already know it.

When to use it (and when not to)

Use it when:

• the team knows roughly what's wrong and needs to decide what to change
• you want a short retro: 30 minutes is realistic
• you're checking a process change, such as a new code review rule or a new standup format
• you want a format that turns into action items with little effort

Pick something else when:

• the team hasn't agreed what the problem is. Start with What Went Well to understand the sprint before you prescribe fixes.
• people need to talk about how the sprint felt. A frustrated team writes angry Stop items; let them say it in Mad Sad Glad first.
• an incident needs a root-cause analysis. Start Stop Continue jumps to fixes too quickly for that.
• you've used it for several sprints and the Stop column only has new versions of the same complaints. Try Sailboat to look at risks and goals instead.

How to run it live (30 minutes)

1. Check what you started last time. Open the Previous Retro tab in the Action Items panel. Every Start item from last retro now belongs in this retro's Continue or Stop: did it work or not?
2. Write silently. Set the shared timer for seven minutes. Ask for at least one note per column.
3. Group duplicates. Drag notes that say the same thing onto each other. "Too many meetings" and "Wednesday sync is pointless" belong together.
4. Vote. Use dot voting with three votes each, then sort by Most Votes.
5. Discuss in this order: Continue, Stop, Start. Continue is quick and gets people talking about what works. Stop comes next, because removing something makes room. Start comes last, with one question for each item: what will this replace? Kuba Niechciał at Intercom makes the case for this order.
6. Decide. Most top-voted Start and Stop items become action items as they are. Give each one an owner.

How to run it async over a sprint

This is the easiest format to run async, because every note is a behavior you can spot the moment it happens. A pointless meeting is a Stop note before you've closed the call.

1. Day 1: open the board when the sprint starts. In Retro Rabbit, the next retro's board opens as soon as you click Start New Retro after your last meeting.
2. During the sprint: add notes as they happen, on the board, in the Team Room's Quick Notes box, or with /retro your note from Slack. Turn off Show Name if you want to post a Stop note without your name on it.
3. Mid-sprint: the facilitator checks the balance. A board that's all Stop means people are venting; add a Continue note yourself and ask others to do the same.
4. Two days before the end: everyone votes. With dot voting on, people see "You have N votes left" in the board header.
5. The day before: the facilitator groups duplicates and checks the CarrotIQ summary of each column.
6. Retro day: in a 15-minute call, confirm owners for the top Start and Stop items. Or do it in writing: post the top three items, ask each proposed owner to accept or push back by end of day.

More in how to run an async retrospective.

12 example prompts

Start

1. What did another team do this sprint that we should copy?
2. What would have saved us the most time if we'd been doing it already?
3. What's one small experiment we could try for just one sprint?
4. What do we keep saying we "should" do?

Stop 5. Which meeting or ritual would nobody miss? 6. What do we do only because we've always done it? 7. Where did we create work for another team without meaning to? 8. What made you context-switch the most this sprint?

Continue 9. What did we start recently that's already paying off? 10. What would break first if we stopped doing it? 11. What do new joiners say they like about how we work? 12. Which habit from last retro's action items should we keep?

For more question sets, see 60 sprint retrospective questions.

Facilitator tip and a common pitfall

Tip: limit Start to two items per sprint. Every Start item adds load. If the team agrees to start five things, they'll do none of them well. Pick the top two by votes and park the rest on the board for next time.

Pitfall: Stop items about people. "Stop Marcus from merging without review" turns a retro into a trial. Rewrite it as a team rule: "Stop merging without at least one review." If people keep writing Stop notes about each other, the team has a trust problem that this format won't fix. Run Mad Sad Glad next time and talk about it directly.

How AI helps with this format

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

• Group names. Stop columns get long and repetitive. Drag "Wednesday sync overruns" onto "too many status meetings" and CarrotIQ names the group, for example "Meeting Overload", so the board stays readable.
• Summaries. The Sprint Summary gives a summary of each column plus an overall summary. Comparing a few sprints' summaries shows whether the same Stop themes keep coming back.
• Suggested action items. CarrotIQ Suggest drafts an action from the notes, weighting the most-voted ones and avoiding duplicates of existing actions. It's a first draft; the team edits it and assigns an owner.

Example action items

At the next retro, the Previous Retro tab lists these, and anything older that's still open is under Old / Unresolved Items. 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. Name your team and choose Start / Stop / Continue as your retro format.
3. Ask the team to add their first note today. Don't wait for retro day.

You can switch the format or rename columns later in the Team Room settings. See pricing for plans.

Related formats

• What Went Well: understand the sprint before deciding what to change
• Sailboat: add risks and a goal to the picture
• 4Ls: a more reflective, less prescriptive format
• The complete guide to sprint retrospectives
• All retrospective templates