Column 1
Keep
What should stay at its current level?
Example cards
- Keep the daily deployment window.
- Keep shared incident notes.
- Keep customer demos in refinement.
Ready-to-use template
KALM Retrospective
KALM asks the team to Keep, Add, do Less, and do More. Its emphasis on dosage makes it useful when the process mostly works but attention and effort need rebalancing.
- Duration
- 30–40 minutes
- Team size
- 3–12 people
- Best for
- Incremental process tuning and teams rebalancing 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.
Column 2
Add
What useful capability or ritual is missing?
Example cards
- Add a pre-mortem for risky work.
- Add owner checks to actions.
- Add support feedback to planning.
Column 3
Less
What has value but receives too much time or weight?
Example cards
- Spend less time polishing internal slides.
- Carry fewer simultaneous goals.
- Use fewer synchronous status updates.
Column 4
More
What needs greater frequency, depth, or attention?
Example cards
- Do more test pairing.
- Share more decision context.
- Reserve more discovery time.
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.
Use this format when
- The team wants gradual rather than disruptive change.
- Capacity must be rebalanced.
- Existing practices are useful but unevenly applied.
Choose another format when
- A harmful practice must stop completely.
- A serious incident needs causal analysis.
- The team needs a simple first-retro format.
Facilitation tips
- Describe Less and More in observable terms.
- Ask what tradeoff creates room for More.
- Do not use Less to avoid naming a needed Stop.
- Protect Keep items from unnecessary change.
- Set a measurable experiment window.
Useful variations
Capacity KALM
Focus Less and More on where team time and cognitive load are going.
Collaboration KALM
Review pairing, meetings, handoffs, feedback, and decision participation.
Quality KALM
Apply the prompts to testing, observability, review, 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.
What is the difference between Less and stopping?
Less keeps a useful practice while reducing its frequency, scope, or cost; stopping removes it.
When is KALM useful?
Use it when the team system mostly works but time, effort, or attention needs rebalancing.
How should KALM actions be written?
State the behavior, desired amount or frequency, owner, experiment period, and success signal.
Related retrospective templates
Run this KALM Retrospective
Open the ready-made columns, invite the team, collect observations, vote, and leave with an owned improvement.