Continue & Beyond

Retrospectives are the ritual of organized reflection — the recurring team meeting where the group pauses work to examine how work is going. The most widely used format, Start/Stop/Continue, is 90% of what most teams need. Other formats (Mad/Sad/Glad, 4Ls, Sailboat, Keep-Drop-Add, Liked-Learned-Lacked-Longed For) address specific situations. The format is less important than the discipline: regular, honest, blame-free reflection with concrete follow-up actions.

Origin

Retrospectives in software date back to the Agile Manifesto (2001) and were formalized in Norm Kerth's Project Retrospectives (2001), which remains the foundational text. Kerth coined the Prime Directive ("Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew..."). Esther Derby and Diana Larsen's Agile Retrospectives (2006) introduced the now-standard five-phase structure (Set the Stage, Gather Data, Generate Insights, Decide What to Do, Close). The informal Start/Stop/Continue format predates agile and appears in management literature from the 1970s, used in feedback and team-improvement contexts.

Start/Stop/Continue

The Framework

START:    What should we start doing that we aren't?
STOP:     What should we stop doing that is not working?
CONTINUE: What is working well that we should keep doing?

The appeal is the radical simplicity: three columns, anyone can fill them in in 2 minutes, the facilitation overhead is near zero.

How to Run It

1. Set the stage (2 min):
   Remind the team of the scope (this sprint, last quarter, this
   incident) and the Prime Directive.

2. Gather data (10-15 min):
   Silent writing — each person adds stickies to each column.
   Silent writing avoids groupthink and surfaces quieter voices.

3. Cluster and discuss (15-20 min):
   Group similar items. Discuss the high-signal clusters.
   Timebox to prevent circling.

4. Decide on actions (10 min):
   For each priority item, agree on a specific, owned, dated action.
   "We should communicate better" is not an action; "Sam will send
   a weekly digest by Friday 9am" is.

5. Close (2 min):
   Thank the team. State where the actions will be tracked.

The entire retro fits in 45-60 minutes for most teams.

Tech & Company Example

A post-sprint retro after a rough quarter:

START:
  - "Writing design docs before coding for non-trivial changes"
    (3 votes)
  - "Pair programming once a week"
  - "Having PMs in standup at least once a week"

STOP:
  - "Taking on sprint-14 items when sprint-13 isn't closed"
    (5 votes)
  - "Long stand-ups that turn into debugging sessions"
  - "Using Slack for everything — some decisions need a meeting"

CONTINUE:
  - "The weekly architecture sync — it's been great"
    (4 votes)
  - "Blameless post-mortems"
  - "Demoing completed work at Friday standup"

Actions:
  1. [Priya] Add a sprint-hygiene section to sprint-planning doc,
     specifically: "no new work until sprint-prior is closed or
     explicitly deferred." By next Tuesday.

  2. [Sam] Stand-up format: capped at 10 minutes, any deep
     discussion moves to a followup. Starting next Monday.

  3. [Jordan] Document the "when to use a meeting vs Slack"
     heuristic on the team wiki. By EOW.

Notice what made this retro work: named owners, specific dates, and concrete actions. Vague "we'll try to do better" retros are where retros go to die.

Other Formats (and When to Use Them)

Mad/Sad/Glad

MAD:  What made us frustrated or angry?
SAD:  What made us disappointed?
GLAD: What made us happy?

Use when: The team has had a tough period emotionally. The emotional framing surfaces issues that start/stop/continue does not.

Caveat: Needs strong facilitation to prevent venting without resolution.

4Ls

LIKED:   What worked well?
LEARNED: What did we learn?
LACKED:  What was missing?
LONGED For: What did we wish we had?

Use when: The retro is about a specific event or project (launch, incident, initiative) rather than a recurring sprint. The Learned and Longed For columns capture insights that Start/Stop/Continue misses.

Sailboat / Speedboat

Draw a sailboat with:
- Wind (what's pushing us forward)
- Anchors (what's holding us back)
- Rocks (risks ahead)
- Island (the goal we're sailing to)

Use when: The team is having trouble articulating blockers, or the scope is longer-term (quarterly, initiative-level). The visual metaphor helps teams think in terms of directional forces rather than isolated incidents.

Keep / Drop / Add

KEEP: What practices or tools do we want to keep?
DROP: What should we stop using?
ADD:  What new thing should we try?

Use when: Focused specifically on process, tooling, or practice changes (not on outcomes or relationships). Useful for a "methodology retro" rather than a sprint retro.

Plus / Delta

PLUS:  What's working (keep doing)?
DELTA: What should we change?

Use when: You have 15 minutes and want a quick pulse check. Not a substitute for a full retro, but useful as a standup add-on or mid-sprint check.

Lean Coffee

1. Everyone writes topic cards silently.
2. Dot-vote to prioritize.
3. Timebox each topic (5-8 min).
4. Vote to extend or move on.

Use when: The team has a lot to discuss but you do not know what. Self-organizing agenda format.

Choosing a Format

Situation                              Format
-------------------------------------------------------
Standard sprint retro                  Start/Stop/Continue
Project wrap-up, launch retro          4Ls
Team has been emotionally tough        Mad/Sad/Glad
Long-term initiative review            Sailboat
Process and tooling focus              Keep/Drop/Add
Short / standing check-in              Plus/Delta
Open agenda, self-organizing           Lean Coffee
Heavy operational incident review      5 Whys + Sailboat

Rotation keeps retros fresh: if you do Start/Stop/Continue every sprint for a year, people stop engaging. Changing format every 4-6 sprints helps.

Facilitation Principles

The Prime Directive

Norm Kerth's opening statement, read at the start of every retro:

"Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand."

The Prime Directive is not ritual — it is the cultural precondition that makes honest retro possible. Without it, people self-censor and retro becomes performance.

Silent Writing First

Always start with silent individual writing before group discussion. This:

- Surfaces quieter voices
- Prevents groupthink
- Gets more data than verbal round-robin
- Reduces anchoring on whoever speaks first

Timebox Aggressively

15 min gather data
15 min discuss
10 min actions
5 min close

If a specific topic needs more discussion, schedule a follow-up. Do not let one topic consume the whole retro.

Rotate Facilitation

If the team lead always facilitates, the retro becomes their retro. Rotate. Junior team members facilitating also builds skill.

Actions with Owners and Dates

Vague retros produce vague action. "We should communicate better" is not an action. Action items have a named owner and a date. Track them and review at the next retro — unactioned actions are a signal (either the action was wrong or the team is not executing, and both are important to notice).

When Retros Work

Any team doing ongoing work where practice can improve
After any significant event (launch, incident, major decision)
In onboarding (quick retros help new team members learn how the team reflects)
Cross-functional program reviews

When Retros Do Not Work

No psychological safety — If people cannot speak honestly, no format saves the retro. Fix the safety first.
No follow-through on actions — If the team consistently fails to execute actions, the retro teaches cynicism.
Retro fatigue — Doing the same format every week for a year with no action execution. People disengage.
Retros as status meetings — Using the retro to report status instead of reflect. Recurring retros should not be for "what did we ship" — that's a different meeting.

Common Failure Modes

Process

Venting Without Resolution — Emotional release without concrete actions. People feel better short-term; nothing changes.
Groupthink Convergence — One person speaks first and everyone agrees. Silent writing prevents this.
Dominant Voices — Senior or extroverted team members monopolize. Facilitator must actively invite quiet voices.
Circular Debate — Discussing the same item for 20 minutes with no convergence. Timebox and move on.

Content

Blame Retro — Retro becomes about "who caused this." Prime Directive and facilitator intervention required.
Surface-Level Findings — Retros that surface symptoms, not causes. Combine with 5 Whys for deeper issues.
Politically Safe Items — Team only surfaces things the lead is okay with. Signal of trust deficit.
Same Items Every Retro — The same "we should document better" item shows up for 6 retros straight. Either the action is wrong, or the team is not executing, or the issue is systemic and needs escalation.

Action

Orphan Actions — Action items with no owner. Will not happen.
Unrealistic Scope — Retro actions that require 2 weeks of work that the team does not have. Set actions that fit in normal sprint capacity.
Forgotten Actions — Actions are never reviewed at the next retro. Track them visibly.