Measure & continuous improvement

Start / Stop / Continue retro

Three columns, one vote, three actions maximum.

When. The simplest retro to sustain over time. The format matters less than the regularity.

Duration
1 h
Participants
Team
Output
3 actions with an owner
Stage
Pre-PMF · Post-PMF · Scale-up · Mature
StartStopContinue
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Filled example

StartSmoke-testing photoupload on a realAndroid van phonebefore releaseInviting Julien tosprint review, hesees the ticketsfirstOne Léa-styletechnician in thebeta group everysprintStopMerging on FridayafternoonEstimating offlinesync stories withoutTom in the roomSilent scope addsfrom sales via SlackDMContinuePairing on the syncengine, two peopleknow it nowDemoing on a phone,not a simulatorWritten sprint goalon the board15-minute standups,no exceptions

Example data. Fieldnote is a fictional company used to fill all 61 boards, so the examples tell one consistent story.

Field app squad at Fieldnote, retro after the sprint that shipped the guided first-intervention flow, one week after the photo upload incident.

What the team took away

Three actions with owners: Friday merge freeze (Tom), Julien at review (Karim), one real technician in beta (Ana). Nothing else, on purpose.

How to run it

Preparation

Agenda

  1. 5 min
    Last actions
    Read the three actions from last time. Done or not. If not done twice, drop it and say so.
  2. 10 min
    Silent writing
    Everyone writes stickies in the three columns, in silence. Minimum two per column. No reading others' notes yet.
  3. 15 min
    Read and cluster
    Each person reads their stickies in one breath, no discussion. Cluster duplicates as you go.
  4. 5 min
    Vote
    Three dots each. Vote only on Start and Stop. Continue is for morale, not for action.
  5. 20 min
    Three actions
    Top three clusters become three actions. Each gets an owner and a check date before next retro. Write them in the team's channel now.
  6. 5 min
    One word
    Close with one word per person on how the retro itself felt. Note anything that says 'useless' and change the format next time.

Pitfalls

Afterwards

The three actions live in the team channel and open the next retro. If the same Stop appears three retros in a row, it is not a team problem: escalate it or run a Team Health Monitor.

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