🗂 Retro formats cheat sheet

This board is set up for What went well / What didn't / What's next, because it needs no explaining and works for any team. But the same four questions every sprint stop producing new answers. Swap the format every six sprints or so.

Each format below changes what people notice. That is the whole point of switching.

What went well / What didn't go well / What's next

The default, and what this board is built around.

Three columns, no framing, no metaphor. Everyone understands it in ten seconds.

Use it when: the team is new to retros, the sprint was uneventful, or you have a guest facilitator.

Weakness: it invites reporting rather than reflection. People list events instead of examining them. Push with "why did that happen" at least twice on the top items.

Start / Stop / Continue

Each card is already phrased as a behavior change: something to start doing, stop doing, or keep doing.

Use it when: previous retros produced good observations and no actions. The format forces the action shape up front, so there is less to convert at the end.

Weakness: it skips the observation step. People jump to solutions before agreeing what the problem was, and you end up debating fixes for a problem nobody defined.

To use it here: rename the three item sections and drop the Votes column to a simple upvote.

4Ls — Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for

Four prompts. Liked and Lacked are the usual good/bad split. Learned surfaces knowledge the team gained. Longed for surfaces what people wished they had.

Use it when: the sprint involved new technology, a new domain, or a lot of unknowns. Learned is where the real value is.

Weakness: Longed for turns into a wish list nobody can act on. Cap it, or agree up front that items there need a named owner to survive.

Mad / Sad / Glad

Cards are sorted by how the sprint felt rather than what happened.

Use it when: something went badly and the team is carrying it. Naming the feeling first lets people say the real thing instead of the diplomatic version.

Weakness: needs genuine psychological safety and a facilitator who can hold the room. Run it badly and it becomes a complaint session with no actions. Do not use it in the first few retros with a new team, and do not use it if a manager in the room controls people's ratings.

Sailboat

A boat drawing. Wind pushes you forward, anchors hold you back, rocks are risks ahead, the island is the goal.

Use it when: you want forward-looking discussion, not just review. Rocks is the only one of these formats that systematically asks about what hasn't gone wrong yet.

Weakness: the metaphor takes five minutes to explain, and remote teams need a whiteboard tool to make it work. Cards also get filed by which metaphor they fit rather than by what matters.

How to actually choose

One caution worth stating plainly: changing format does not fix a retro where nobody says anything. That is a safety problem, and no set of column headings solves it. If people are quiet, run the retro without managers present for a few sprints and see whether anything changes.