| name | retro |
| description | Facilitate team retrospectives — structured backward-looking reflection on completed sprints, features, or incidents to extract lessons and drive continuous improvement. |
| category | Team Methodology |
| status | active |
Retro
Purpose
Run structured team retrospectives: surface what worked, what didn't, and convert insights into tracked action items. Distinct from [[journal]] (personal reflection) and [[planning]] (forward design).
When to Use
- End of sprint, milestone, or feature completion
- Post-incident analysis (blameless post-mortems)
- Quarterly team-health reviews
- When the same problem recurs across cycles (forces structured introspection)
Activation phrases: "run a retro on...", "what went well/badly...", "facilitate team reflection", "document lessons from..."
Core Formats
Pick one per session — mixing dilutes focus.
| Format | Prompts | Best for |
|---|
| Start / Stop / Continue | What to start, stop, continue doing? | New teams; clear action bias |
| Glad / Sad / Mad | Emotions surface root causes | Conflict, low morale |
| 4 L's | Liked / Learned / Lacked / Longed-for | Mature teams; nuance |
| 5 Whys | Drill into one specific failure | Post-incident |
| Sailboat | Wind (helps), anchors (slows), rocks (risks), island (goal) | Roadmap-style retros |
Facilitation Workflow
- Set the stage (2 min) — state the time window under review; reaffirm psychological safety; remind: blame the system, not the person.
- Gather data (10 min) — silent writing on sticky notes (one observation per note). Async-friendly variant: shared markdown doc, 24h window.
- Generate insights (10 min) — cluster notes by theme; let patterns emerge.
- Decide actions (10 min) — each action item must have an owner + due date + measurable outcome. No "we should..." without a name.
- Close (3 min) — read action items aloud; capture in markdown report.
Time-box ruthlessly: 30 minutes for weekly retros, 60 minutes for sprint retros. Long retros lose attention and produce vague actions.
Output Template
Save to plans/retros/YYMMDD-<topic>-retro.md:
# Retro · <topic>
**Date**: YYYY-MM-DD · **Period**: <start> → <end> · **Attendees**: ...
## Went well
- ...
## Didn't go well
- ...
## Action items
- [ ] <action> — owner: @name — due: YYYY-MM-DD — measure: <criterion>
## Themes / patterns
- ...
Anti-Patterns
- Blame-storming: focus shifts to people, not systems. Fix: facilitator reframes ("what process let this happen?").
- Action-item graveyard: items never tracked. Fix: review last retro's actions at the start of the next; archive completed, escalate stale.
- Silenced voices: senior people dominate. Fix: silent writing first, then read-around; weight intro/extrovert participation.
- Ritual without change: same complaints every cycle. Fix: bias toward small, owned, measurable actions over big-picture rants.
Future Enhancement
Auto-extract candidate retro topics from [[plans-kanban]] blockers and [[journal]] entries — deferred until both skills mature.
References
See references/:
atlassian-retrospectives.md — Agile-standard facilitation frameworkagile-retrospective-methods.md — Methods, examples, timing (2024)aha-continuous-improvement.md — Continuous improvement loop integration
Cross-links
[[journal]], [[planning]], [[orchestrate]], [[plans-kanban]]
