The toolkit · Retro prompts
Retro prompts, fresh every time.
Fresh prompts for your next sprint retrospective. Pick a framework, shuffle the deck, run the retro.
335+ prompts · 10 frameworks · free
Pick a framework
The classic. Three columns, fast to run, hard to argue with.
When to use it: When you want a fast, action-oriented retro with no warm-up. Works for any team, any sprint length.
Start
What's one thing we should start doing next sprint?
10 prompts in this bucket
Stop
What should we stop doing immediately?
10 prompts in this bucket
Continue
What's working that we should protect?
10 prompts in this bucket
Open a framework directly
Start, Stop, Continue
The classic. Three columns, fast to run, hard to argue with.
4Ls
Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for. More texture than 3-column.
Mad, Sad, Glad
Emotional check-in. Surfaces the stuff data can't see.
Rose, Bud, Thorn
What's blooming, what's growing, what's prickly. Garden metaphor, real insight.
Sailboat
Wind, anchors, rocks, island. Visual metaphor that travels well.
KALM
Keep, Add, Less, More. Subtler than Start/Stop/Continue.
DAKI
Drop, Add, Keep, Improve. Action-first, easy to translate to a backlog.
Three Little Pigs
House of straw, sticks, bricks. Fragile, sturdy, unbreakable.
Glad, Sad, Mad, Wondering
Mad/Sad/Glad with a curiosity dimension. Surfaces uncertainty, not just emotion.
Lean Coffee
Open-agenda format. The team picks the topics in real time.
More free tools
How to choose a retro framework
Most teams settle on a default and run it forever. That's a mistake. Even good frameworks go stale, and the team starts answering on autopilot. The shape of the format you pick should match the sprint just finished, not the format you ran last time. Here's how to pick.
The fast call (under 30 min)
- Default for most sprints. Start, Stop, Continue. Three columns, action-shaped, hard to argue with.
- Team is mostly happy. KALM. Dial-tuning rather than overhauls.
- Something specific is on everyone's mind. Lean Coffee. The team picks the topics, the format gets out of the way.
Standard sprint retro (30-45 min)
- Something more than work happened. 4Ls. The Liked column rebuilds the ground the harder columns will spend.
- Steady state, want texture without weight. Rose, Bud, Thorn. The Bud column catches things other formats miss.
- Every item should land in the backlog. DAKI. Action-first. The Improve column is the secret weapon.
When something is off
- Tension nobody is naming. Mad, Sad, Glad. High-trust, use sparingly.
- Decisions or strategy felt unclear. Glad, Sad, Mad, Wondering. The Wondering column is where the unspoken questions land.
When the question is bigger than a sprint
- Quarterly or project mid-point. Sailboat. Wind, anchors, rocks, island. Momentum and direction together.
- Post-incident or pre-launch durability. Three Little Pigs. Houses of straw, sticks, and bricks. What would survive?
How long should a retro be?
For a two-week sprint, 30 to 45 minutes is the right band. For a one-week sprint, 20 to 25 minutes. For a quarterly Sailboat or Three Little Pigs, 60 to 90 minutes. Longer is rarely better. If your retros need more time, that usually means the team is using the meeting to do work that should have happened in real time during the sprint, like a deferred argument finally getting its day in court.
Rotate the format
Every four to six retros, switch frameworks. Even switching between Start, Stop, Continue and 4Ls is enough to keep answers fresh. Think of it like rotating the coffee blend: same ritual, different notes. The team stays present. You get better data. The point isn't to find the perfect format. It's to keep the team paying attention.