As you saw in a previous article, there are many different Agile Retrospective meeting formats. Here we’ll look at how to know which retro format is right for your development team.

Start-Stop-Continue Sprint Retrospective

The Start-Stop-Continue retrospective format focuses on your team’s strengths and weaknesses. It is a great way to take a step back and logically look at what is working well for your team and what isn’t. It is nice for agile teams who have tried new things in the past sprint and want to discuss in detail how it worked out.

‍What went well? What didn't go well Sprint Retrospective

This meeting format is especially good for creating action plans and reviewing performances and products that were used and created in the last sprint. These formats are a great way to continuously improve your team’s development process.

‍Mad-Sad-Glad Sprint Retrospective

This format focuses how your team felt during the previous sprint. Mad-Glad-Sad retro gives you good insights into which techniques worked well and could continue to work well in the future. It’s also a great way for a team to come up with concrete action plans to use in the upcoming sprint in order to improve operations. 

Lean Coffee Sprint Retrospective

This type of format is very successful in many circumstances, as it gives the team the opportunity to have an open-ended conversation that is entirely directed by the team themselves. It keeps them involved and interested, as well as creates an open forum for everyone to share. Lean Coffee retrospective format also ensures that the topics that are important to the team as a collective.

Sailboat Sprint Retrospective

This format is a great way for your team to look at the big picture and to discuss each of the different aspects that define a project. The Saliboat retro helps them look at what has helped them and what has held them back and, from that, they can make an action plan for going forward into the next sprint.

4Ls Sprint Retrospective

The 4Ls retro is another good way for your team to break down the parts of the projects they have worked on and look, in detail, at what aspects they liked and what they learned, as well as things that their previous plans lacked and what they would like to see in the future.

Oscar Academy Awards Sprint Retrospective

The Oscar type of retrospective meeting is a great way to motivate your team. Rather than focusing on what didn’t work, its focus is to give credit where credit is due and encourage the team members by pointing out what they did well.

Iteration Sprint Retrospective

This is a very reflective format to use with your team. By looking back on the previous iteration completed, your team is able to look at it by focusing on two parts: qualitative and quantitative reviews. These two reviews help the big picture become clearer and make it easy for your team to reflect on its present goals and techniques.

Remote Sprint Retrospective

This is excellent retrospective for teams who work from different places, hence Remote retrospective. If you and your team work remotely, then this is the format for you.

While there are many different choices of retrospective formats, there is one that is right for you and your team. You can try out various types and see which worked best for you and your dev team.