Use this format when
- The team has stable practices it can tune.
- Start Stop Continue leaves too little room for small adjustments.
- The team agrees a practice needs attention and disagrees on how far to change it.
Retrospective templates Updated
Starfishretrospective template
An established practice may need a lighter touch, extra attention, or steady protection. The Starfish retrospective gives those choices their own columns while keeping Start Doing and Stop Doing for complete changes.
- Duration
- 35 to 45 minutes
- Team size
- 3–12 people
- Best for
- Established teams making careful adjustments to familiar practices
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 Doing
3Which practices already work well at their current level and deserve to stay exactly where they are?
- Keep holding the customer playback once every week.
- Keep rotating the people assigned as code review buddies from one review cycle to the next.
- Keep using the release checklist for each release.
Less Of
3Which useful practices happen too often or take up too much effort?
- Spend less time estimating low-risk chores.
- Use fewer approval steps when a change is easy for the team to reverse.
- Schedule fewer overlapping initiatives.
More Of
3Which helpful practice deserves extra time, attention, or frequency?
- Do more exploratory testing before release.
- Share more of the work's surrounding context with the people in support.
- Reserve more time for technical discovery.
Stop Doing
3Which practice should the team remove from its work completely?
- Stop copying status into three systems.
- Stop starting a piece of work before its acceptance criteria have been written.
- Stop postponing flaky test fixes.
Start Doing
3Which new experiment should the team introduce into its work?
- Start tracking blocked time.
- Start holding one focused design review that lasts fifteen minutes.
- Start naming a clear owner for every action the team agrees during the retrospective.
35 to 45 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 new team is still building shared history.
- The meeting has only twenty minutes available for the full conversation from beginning to end.
- One urgent incident needs a single focused review.
Facilitation tips
- Explain the line between Less Of and Stop Doing before anyone begins writing a card for the board.
- Ask for evidence about frequency, cost, or outcomes.
- Combine cards that describe the same practice from opposite sides before voting.
- Keep the vote count below five.
- Turn every More Of or Less Of choice into an experiment the team can measure.
Useful variations
Lean Starfish
Collect every card asynchronously before the live meeting begins. Use the meeting for voting and discussion.
Delivery Starfish
Use all five prompts across planning, development, review, and release.
Collaboration Starfish
Keep every card focused on communication, pairing, handoffs, and the support people give across the team.
Before the retro
Recommended warm-up
Frequently asked questions
What are the five areas of a Starfish retrospective?
The five areas are Keep Doing, Less Of, More Of, Stop Doing, and Start Doing.
How is Starfish different from Start Stop Continue?
Start Stop Continue handles complete changes. Starfish also has Keep Doing, Less Of, and More Of, so a team can adjust the amount of a useful practice.
When should a team use Starfish?
Use Starfish with an established team that has enough shared history to make careful process adjustments.
How do you prevent too many Starfish actions?
Group related cards into shared themes, then give the team votes that work across the whole board. Choose one or two experiments, then give each an owner and review date.
Run this Starfish Retrospective
Open the ready-made columns, invite the team, collect observations, vote, and leave with an owned improvement.