Use this format when
- Most of the process works, and the team wants a careful tune-up.
- Time or attention is uneven.
- Useful practices still help, though their current frequency or intensity leaves the team's work out of balance.
Retrospective templates Updated
KALMretrospective template
Some team processes are healthy overall and still feel out of balance. KALM gives the group four precise choices for that conversation: Keep, Add, Less, and More, each with a different kind of adjustment. Those choices help the team shift effort while preserving practices that already work.
- Duration
- 30–40 minutes
- Team size
- 3–12 people
- Best for
- Careful process tuning when the team needs to rebalance time or attention
What each column means
Use the prompts to keep cards specific. The examples show the level of detail that makes discussion and voting useful.
Keep
3Which practices are working well at their current level?
- Keep the daily deployment window as it is.
- Keep sharing incident notes.
- Keep customer demos in refinement as a steady part of the team's current process.
Add
3Which missing capability or ritual would help the team?
- Add a pre-mortem for risky work.
- Add owner checks to action items so every follow-up leaves the room with clear responsibility.
- Add support feedback to planning.
Less
3Which useful activity is taking too much time or carrying too much weight?
- Spend less time polishing internal slides.
- Carry fewer goals at the same time, with each one clearly visible to the team.
- Use fewer synchronous status updates.
More
3Which useful practice needs extra frequency, depth, or attention?
- Do more test pairing.
- Share more context behind decisions, especially when the choice changes another team's work.
- Reserve more time for discovery.
30–40 minutes agenda
A complete path from framing the room to assigning one concrete follow-up.
- 013 minutes
Frame the review
Name the sprint or project being reviewed, restate the purpose of each column, and remind everyone to describe observable events.
- 027 minutes
Write observations silently
Give everyone uninterrupted time to add one specific observation per card across every column.
- 037 minutes
Share and clarify
Read the cards column by column and let authors add context without debating solutions yet.
- 045 minutes
Group and vote
Combine cards that describe the same pattern, then vote for the themes that would most improve the next iteration.
- 0510 minutes
Discuss the leading themes
Explore causes, consequences, and tradeoffs behind the highest-voted themes while making space for dissenting evidence.
- 065 minutes
Commit to one change
Turn the strongest insight into a small action with an owner, deadline, and signal the team can review next time.
Choose another format when
- A harmful practice needs to end completely.
- A serious incident calls for causal analysis before the group moves on to process adjustments.
- First retrospectives need an easier format.
Facilitation tips
- Define Less and More with a number, cadence, or other behavior people can observe.
- Ask which tradeoff creates room for More.
- Reserve Less for a practice the team wants to keep, once its frequency or scope comes down. Put practices that must end into a clear Stop conversation.
- Let Keep items continue unchanged.
- Set an experiment window and choose a result the team can measure.
Useful variations
Capacity KALM
Use Less and More to examine where team time goes and which work adds cognitive load.
Collaboration KALM
Pairing, meetings, handoffs, feedback, and decision participation.
Quality KALM
Bring the four prompts to testing, observability, reviews, and defect prevention.
Before the retro
Recommended warm-up
Most Likely To
Begin with positive appreciation before discussing what to keep and amplify.
Frequently asked questions
What does KALM mean in a retrospective?
KALM stands for Keep, Add, Less, and More, the four choices available in the exercise. Each label gives the team a different way to adjust how it works.
What is the difference between Less and stopping?
Less keeps a useful practice in place while reducing its frequency, narrowing its scope, or lowering its cost. Stopping removes the practice completely.
When is KALM useful?
Choose KALM when most of the team system works and time, effort, or attention needs rebalancing.
How should KALM actions be written?
Name the behavior, desired amount or frequency, owner, experiment period, and success signal. Specifics turn a broad intention into an experiment the team can review.
Run this KALM Retrospective
Open the ready-made columns, invite the team, collect observations, vote, and leave with an owned improvement.