| name | Retro Facilitation |
| description | "Use when designing or running a sprint retrospective, when the same retros keep producing no change, or when team morale needs attention. Triggers on "retro", "retrospective", "sprint review", "team health", "sailboat", "start stop continue"." |
Retro Facilitation
When to invoke
- "Design a retro for our 8th sprint - people are bored."
- "Our retros produce action items nobody does. Fix it."
- "Facilitate a blameless retro after an outage."
Core principles
- Blameless. Focus on systems, not people.
- Time-boxed. 90 minutes max. Longer = cognitive fatigue.
- Action-oriented. End with 2-3 actions with owners and dates. No orphan actions.
- Varied format. Same format every sprint = autopilot answers.
Standard arc (90 min)
- Set the stage (5 min): principles reminder, today's goal.
- Gather data (20 min): choose a format below.
- Generate insight (25 min): cluster themes, ask "why?" 5 times on the top cluster.
- Decide what to do (25 min): vote on 1-3 actions. Assign owner + due date.
- Close (10 min): recap, one-word check-out.
Format rotation (pick one per retro)
Sailboat
- Wind: what propels us forward?
- Anchors: what holds us back?
- Rocks: what risks are ahead?
- Island: what is our destination?
Start / Stop / Continue
Simple, good for new teams. Gets stale after 3 uses.
4 Ls
- Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for.
Timeline retro
Sketch the sprint on a timeline. Mark highs, lows, surprises. Good after an outage or a tough sprint.
Glad / Sad / Mad
Emotional check-in. Use when morale is an issue.
Speed car
- Engine: what gives us speed?
- Parachute: what slows us?
- Cliff: risks ahead?
- Bridge: improvements we can build?
Anti-patterns
- Same format every sprint.
- Actions with no owner or due date.
- Actions that require someone outside the team (those are "requests", not actions).
- Retro becomes a complaint session with no synthesis.
- Manager dominates the conversation.
Output template
## Retro - Sprint <N> - <Date>
### Format
Sailboat
### Themes (top 3)
1. <Theme> - <why>
2. <Theme> - <why>
3. <Theme> - <why>
### Actions
- [ ] <Action> - Owner: <name> - Due: <date>
- [ ] <Action> - Owner: <name> - Due: <date>
- [ ] <Action> - Owner: <name> - Due: <date>
### Check-out
<one-word from each team member>
Quality gate
If retro ends without 2-3 actions each with an owner and a due date, the retro failed.
