Retrospective agenda template
Sixty minutes. Three changes. The rest you drop.
A retrospective agenda is a spine, not a mood board. One hour, five to nine people who shared this sprint’s board. Facts, then votes, then owners and dates. If you need happy-or-sad dots or a mural that dies in Confluence, this is the wrong format.
Title. What we shipped, what broke, what changes.
When. 10:00–11:00. Same room as standup. This sprint only — dates on the board before anyone sits. Walking in at :20 to “hear the actions” kills the format.
Outcomes. A shared list of what actually shipped (customer-usable or unblocking). Breaks named as systems and missing artifacts, not characters. Three changes, each a behavior that lives in a named place. An owner and an evidence date on each of the three. Losers documented and dropped. The three rows pasted in the team channel before anyone stands up.
Materials. Board with SHIPPED / BROKE / CHANGE plus a small FEELINGS parking board. Sprint dates at the top. Printed workbooks, one per chair. Stickies and one sharpie each. Two vote dots per person. Timer. Team channel open so the rows get pasted in the room.
The 60-minute spine
| Clock | Min | Mode | Segment |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10:00 | 5 | Talk |
Set the window This sprint only. Write-before-talk. Systems, not people. Three columns. End at 11:00. |
| 10:05 | 10 | Activity |
What we shipped Customer-usable or unblocking. Not “made progress on.” If the column is empty, that is already the retro. |
| 10:15 | 12 | Activity |
What broke Missed commit, incident, review that sat, meeting that ate a day. Probe each cluster once: what system failed. |
| 10:27 | 12 | Activity |
What we will change A behavior with a place it lives. Orphans that fix a feeling go to the side board. |
| 10:39 | 6 | Activity |
Vote Two dots each, on changes you will live with. Line under the top three. The rest is dropped. |
| 10:45 | 10 | Discussion |
Owners and dates One owner, observable evidence, a date. If nobody takes it, it dies in the room. |
| 10:55 | 5 | Talk |
Close Read the three rows. Paste them in the team channel. No hallway second retro. |
5 + 10 + 12 + 12 + 6 + 10 + 5 = 60. That is the whole hour. Feelings stay on the parking board on purpose.
How each block earns its minutes
10:00 · Set the window · 5
Say. This retro covers this sprint only — the dates on the board. Not the last six months, not the company, not how you feel about the roadmap. We end at 60:00. Three columns: shipped, broke, change. We vote, we name owners, we put dates. If it does not get an owner today it does not go on a mural to die. You will write before you talk. No speech about “communication” unless you can name the meeting and the missed artifact.
Do. Sprint dates at the top. Draw SHIPPED / BROKE / CHANGE and a small FEELINGS board (2). Sharpie and stickies each (1). One-line no-blame rule out loud (1). Visible timer. Last minute: they copy the two pre-work facts into the workbook. Do not start Shipped early. 2+1+1+1=5.
On their page. Window: this sprint only. If I need a person’s name to make the sentence work, I rewrite it around the artifact. The two facts I brought.
10:05 · What we shipped · 10
Silent four. Place two. Read each once, cluster duplicates, do not editorialize, four. Star anything that shipped late or on a heroics weekend — that feeds column two. If the column is thin, say so out loud and do not rescue it with in-progress work. 4+2+4=10. Shipped means a customer can use it, or an internal thing that unblocked them. “Billing improvements” is not a sticky.
10:15 · What broke · 12
Silent five. Place two. Cluster three. For each cluster, one probe: “What system failed?” Write the system name above the cluster, two. Do not solve yet. If it is personal: “That is a 1:1, not this column” — move it to FEELINGS without drama. 5+2+3+2=12. Do not steal from Change.
10:27 · What we will change · 12
A change is a behavior with a place it lives: “PRs over 400 lines get a same-day pairing slot,” not “improve code review.” You may only write a change that would have prevented one cluster in column two, or made a shipped thing less expensive. Silent six. Placement three. Read once, move orphans to FEELINGS, keep the candidate set to 6–10, three. 6+3+3=12. If someone writes “communicate more,” ask them to name the meeting and the artifact, or park it.
10:39 · Vote · 6
Two votes each. Put them on the changes you are willing to live with, not the ones that sound virtuous. Stacking is allowed. You may not vote for a change you will silently refuse to do. Dot vote sixty seconds. Count out loud two. Box the top three two. Photograph the whole board before anything moves one. 1+2+2+1=6. Everything below the line is documented and dropped. We do not keep a fourteen-item improvement backlog. That is how retros rot.
10:45 · Owners and dates · 10
Table on the board: CHANGE / OWNER / EVIDENCE / DATE (1). Fill standing, six. Evidence must be observable — template merged, checklist used in standup, page in the runbook. Restate each change in the owner’s words, two. If the PM is taking all three, stop and reallocate. Last one: three rows stay on the board for Close. 1+6+2+1=10. If nobody takes it, it dies right now, and that is a valid outcome.
10:55 · Close · 5
Read the three rows, two. Photograph, one. Paste into the team channel while people are still in the room, one. End at 60:00, one. 2+1+1+1=5. Do not take “one more thing.” Leave the FEELINGS board unprocessed on purpose. Do not hold a second retro in the hallway about the thing you did not say.
If Shipped runs long, you still take Broke. You steal from the next retro’s opening, not from Owners today. A sixty-minute retro that skips dates is a complaint session with better stickies.
What does not belong on this spine
- Happy / sad dots. Mood is a parking board, not a column.
- Skip-level guests and adjacent teams “sitting in.” Five to nine people who shared this board.
- A six-month lookback. The dates on the board are the window.
- A fourth change bargained back after the line. Document it as dropped.
- A person as the sticky. Rewrite around the artifact or the missed handshake.
- A deck. One channel paste is the record. The wall is the work.
Pre-work, in one paragraph
Before they sit (ten minutes, on paper): one thing that shipped — a customer can use it, or it unblocked them — and one thing that broke — missed commit, incident, review that sat, meeting that ate a day. Name the artifact, not the person. If they cannot make the full hour, they say so the day before. The letter is in the workshop pre-work email guide.
After house lights: three changes, owners, evidence, dates. Considered-and-dropped so nobody “just reminds us” next week. Next retro starts by reading those three rows — done, slipped, or killed. The letter is in the workshop follow-up email guide.
Places ships this hour as a kit: timed segments, say-this, do-this, the workbook prompts, the emails. Open it, put your sprint dates in, print the paper.
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