Sprint Retrospective

When to use this skill

• End of sprint: at the end of each sprint

• Project milestone: after major releases

• Team issues: when an immediate retrospective is needed

Instructions

Step 1: Start-Stop-Continue

Retrospective Template: Start-Stop-Continue

START (Start doing)

• Make daily standups shorter (within 5 minutes)
• Use a code review checklist
• Introduce pair programming

STOP (Stop doing)

• Deploying on Friday afternoons (rollback risk)
• Overusing emergency meetings
• Adding features without documentation

CONTINUE (Keep doing)

• Weekly tech sharing session
• Automated tests
• Transparent communication

Action Items

1. Change standup time from 9:00 → 9:30 (Team Lead)
2. Write a code review checklist document (Developer A)
3. Announce the "no Friday deployments" rule (Team Lead)

Step 2: Mad-Sad-Glad

Retrospective: Mad-Sad-Glad

MAD (What made us mad)

• Urgent bugs after deployment (twice)
• Requirements changed frequently
• Unstable test environment

SAD (What we wished went better)

• Not enough time for code reviews
• Documentation lagged behind
• Accumulating tech debt

GLAD (What made us glad)

• New team members onboarded quickly
• CI/CD pipeline stabilized
• Positive customer feedback

Action Items

• Strengthen the deployment checklist
• Improve the requirements change process
• Reserve documentation time every Friday

Step 3: 4Ls (Liked-Learned-Lacked-Longed For)

Retrospective: 4Ls

LIKED (What we liked)

• Great teamwork
• Successfully adopted a new tech stack

LEARNED (What we learned)

• Standardize the local environment with Docker Compose
• Improve server state management with React Query

LACKED (What we lacked)

• Performance testing
• Mobile support

LONGED FOR (What we longed for)

• Better developer tools
• External training opportunities

Action Items

• Automatically measure performance by introducing Lighthouse CI
• Write responsive design guidelines

Output format

Retrospective document

Sprint [N] Retrospective

Date: 2025-01-15 Participants: Team Member A, B, C, D Format: Start-Stop-Continue

What Went Well

• Completed all stories (Velocity: 25 points)
• 0 bugs
• Great team morale

What Didn't Go Well

• Tech spike took longer than expected
• Rework due to design changes

Action Items

1. Assign tech spikes to a dedicated sprint (Team Lead, ~01/20)
2. Introduce a pre-review process for designs (Designer, ~01/18)
3. Share the velocity chart (Scrum Master, weekly)

Key Metrics

• Velocity: 25 points
• Bugs Found: 0
• Sprint Goal Achievement: 100%

Constraints

Required Rules (MUST)

• Safe Space: a blame-free environment

• Action Items: must be specific and actionable

• Follow-up: check progress in the next retrospective

Prohibited (MUST NOT)

• Personal attacks: improve the process, not the person

• Too many actions: limit to 2-3

Best practices

• Time-box: within 1 hour

• Rotate Facilitator: team members take turns facilitating

• Celebrate Wins: celebrate successes too

References

• Retrospective Formats

• Agile Retrospectives

Metadata

Version

• Current version: 1.0.0

• Last updated: 2025-01-01

• Supported platforms: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini

Tags

#retrospective #agile #scrum #team-improvement #project-management

Examples

Example 1: Basic usage

Example 2: Advanced usage