All tools › Retrospective sheet
The tool · team improvement
Retrospective sheet
Did last time's action happen?
first item, every sessionWhat went well that we should keep doing?
first, deliberatelyWhat was harder than it needed to be?
about the work, not the personWhat surprised us?
surprises point at assumptionsThe one thing we change
one, not fiveWhy this is one action and not five
A session that produces eight improvements produces zero. A busy team cannot absorb eight changes.
An action with no owner belongs to nobody. Name a person, not a function.
Open the next session by checking it. That is the only reason anyone takes this seriously.
Raising fewer over time is the process working, not the team losing interest.
Run these on a cadence, not after trouble. A retrospective that only happens after something went badly is a tribunal with a friendlier name. Expect the first two sessions to be shallow and run the third anyway.
Start next retro moves this session’s one action to the top of a fresh sheet as the item to check, which is the step teams skip and the reason retrospectives stop being taken seriously. Nothing is sent anywhere; it saves in this browser only.
Prefer paper? Download the blank sheet as a PDF. The thinking behind it is in The Retro.
General guidance from practice, not legal, HR, or financial advice. Everything you type stays in this browser and is never sent to a server; clearing site data removes it.