🔄 Retrospectives are essential for agile teams to reflect on past performance, celebrate successes, and identify areas for improvement. But structuring a retrospective effectively can be challenging. That’s where retrospective templates come in—offering pre-structured frameworks tailored to your team’s goals.
What Are Retrospective Templates?
Retrospective templates are structured question frameworks designed to guide team discussions around emotions, processes, risks, and opportunities. These templates help teams stay focused, encourage collaboration, and drive meaningful insights for continuous improvement.
Exploring Retrospective Templates
1⃣ Agile Retrospective – General Team Reflection 😄
✅ Purpose: Helps teams reflect on positives and challenges while encouraging innovation.
📝 Questions:
What went well?
What went less well?
What do we want to try next?
What puzzles us?
2⃣ Start, Stop, Continue – Actionable Change
✅ Purpose: Encourages teams to adapt behaviors and processes effectively.
📝 Questions:
Start
Stop
Continue
3⃣ Mad, Sad, Glad – Emotional Insights
✅ Purpose: Encourages teams to express emotions that impact productivity.
📝 Questions:
Mad
Sad
Glad
4⃣ Went Well, To Improve, Action Items – Turning Reflections into Actions
✅ Purpose: Combines reflective insights with actionable outcomes.
📝 Questions:
Went Well
To Improve
Action Items
5⃣ To Discuss, Discussing, Discussed – Discussion Tracking
✅ Purpose: Ensures unresolved topics are addressed and discussions remain structured.
📝 Questions:
To Discuss
Discussing
Discussed
6⃣ 4Ls (Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed For) – Learning-Focused Reflections
✅ Purpose: Helps teams analyze strengths, weaknesses, and learning opportunities.
📝 Questions:
Liked
Learned
Lacked
Longed For
7⃣ FLAP – Comprehensive Project Evaluation
✅ Purpose: Ideal for assessing accomplishments, challenges, and future considerations.
📝 Questions:
Future Considerations
Lessons Learned
Accomplishments
Problem Areas
8⃣ Sailboat – Motivation & Risks
✅ Purpose: A metaphor-driven approach to discussing team progress and roadblocks.
📝 Questions:
What is the wind pushing our sails forward?
What anchors are holding us back?
What rocks are ahead of us that risk our future?
What is our ideal island destination?
9⃣ 3 Little Pigs – Stability & Resilience
✅ Purpose: Encourages teams to assess the strength of their processes.
📝 Questions:
House of Straws
House of Sticks
House of Bricks
🔟 Speed Car - Engine – Speed & Barriers
✅ Purpose: Identifies accelerators and blockers in team progress.
📝 Questions:
What makes us move faster?
Parachute: What is slowing us down?
1⃣1⃣ Six Thinking Hats – Diverse Perspectives
✅ Purpose: Encourages teams to analyze issues from multiple viewpoints.
📝 Questions:
Green Hat (Creativity)
Blue Hat (Process)
White Hat (Facts)
Red Hat (Emotions)
Black Hat (Risks)
Yellow Hat (Optimism)
1⃣2⃣ Keep, Add, Less, More – Adjustments & Improvements
✅ Purpose: Helps teams fine-tune their processes and behaviors.
📝 Questions:
Keep
Add
Less
More
1⃣3⃣ Rose, Bud, Thorn – Balancing Positives & Challenges
✅ Purpose: Encourages optimism while addressing concerns.
📝 Questions:
Rose (Successes)
Bud (Opportunities)
Thorn (Obstacles)
1⃣4⃣ Additional Templates
Explorer, Shopper, Vacationer, Prisoner – Identifies participant mindsets.
Drop, Add, Keep, Improve – Focuses on change management.
Mistakes, Experiments, Practices, Learnings – Encourages growth through past experiences.
Love, Want, Hate, Learn – Balances team preferences.
Good, Bad, Better, Best – Simple yet effective for measuring progress.
Key Results, Initiatives, Objectives – Aligns with business goals.
Happy, Meh, Sad – Quick pulse check on team sentiment.
Enhance Your Retrospectives with Retrospectives by Harmony
🚀 Retrospectives by Harmony provides customizable retrospective templates directly in Slack. With this app, you can:
✔ Choose from 20+ templates to match your team’s goals.
✔ Run retrospectives synchronously or asynchronously.
✔ Track action items to drive continuous improvement.
🔗 Install Retrospectives by Harmony and take your team’s retrospectives to the next level!
For more details, check out all Harmony apps here: apps4harmony.com/apps