retro-facilitation

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)

1. Set the stage (5 min): principles reminder, today's goal.
2. Gather data (20 min): choose a format below.
3. Generate insight (25 min): cluster themes, ask "why?" 5 times on the top cluster.
4. Decide what to do (25 min): vote on 1-3 actions. Assign owner + due date.
5. 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.