A quick vote can flatten mixed evidence. Plus Minus Interesting slows the team down long enough to separate clear benefits and drawbacks from surprises, unanswered questions, and consequences that still need a label.
Use the prompts to keep cards specific. The examples show the level of detail that makes discussion and voting useful.
What helped, lowered risk, or worked well enough to protect?
What added cost, friction, delay, or risk?
Which details surprised us or remain uncertain, and what could change the way the team reads the result?
A complete path from framing the room to assigning one concrete follow-up.
Name the sprint, experiment, proposed change, or decision under review. Set clear start and end points for the evidence period.
Write down concrete benefits, strengths, and outcomes that the team wants to protect. Ask for observable effects and skip general praise.
Capture the costs, friction, delays, and risks first. Save every debate about solutions until the collection round is complete.
Record surprises, unknowns, second-order effects, and evidence whose direction is still unclear.
Cluster related evidence, then vote by impact or uncertainty. The card counts can stay in the background.
Choose one clear strength that the team wants to preserve. Reduce one risk. Give one unanswered question an owner and a date for the next check.
Use PMI before committing to a proposed change. Capture expected benefits, likely costs, and the assumptions that still need evidence.
Put the results beside a clear hypothesis. Use Interesting for side effects and unanswered questions.
Gather each discipline's view separately, then group the cards to find shared effects and important differences.
Before the retro
Plus Minus Interesting, or PMI, separates benefits, drawbacks, and open questions or possibilities before a team reaches a conclusion.
Use Interesting for surprises, unanswered questions, neutral observations, and second-order effects. It also holds evidence that could change the decision once the team understands it better.
PMI gives uncertainty and curiosity one column. Useful evidence can stay open until the team knows which way it points.
Yes. A futurespective PMI compares expected benefits and likely costs while surfacing assumptions the team still needs to test.
Choose one Plus to protect and one Minus to reduce. Give the Interesting question most likely to change the decision an owner and a review point.
Open a ready board with Plus, Minus, and Interesting already in place. Sort the mixed evidence and leave with one focused next step.
