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WRAPretrospective template

WRAP stands for Wishes, Risks, Appreciations, and Puzzles. Together, the prompts give uncertain work a wider review: the future the team wants, trouble on the horizon, contributions worth recognizing, and questions that still lack an answer.

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Duration
30–40 minutes
Team size
3–12 people
Best for
Project transitions, uncertain work, and reviews that need to look forward
WRAP retrospective template preview

What each column means

Use the prompts to keep cards specific. The examples show the level of detail that makes discussion and voting useful.

Wishes

3

What do we hope becomes possible or works differently next?

  • I wish releases needed fewer manual checks.
  • I wish engineers joined discovery earlier.
  • I wish action items stayed visible after the meeting, right through to the point when someone marks them complete.

Risks

3

What could hurt delivery, quality, or the health of the team?

  • One person holds all the migration knowledge.
  • The launch depends on a system limit nobody has tested, and the team still lacks evidence about how it behaves.
  • Support load may exceed the team's capacity.

Appreciations

3

Whose contribution or behavior helped the team?

  • Thanks for documenting every rollback step while the incident details were still fresh for the rest of us.
  • Design tested the concept before the build started.
  • Ops explained the alert pattern clearly.

Puzzles

3

Which parts of the work still feel confusing, contradictory, or unknown, even after the team compares what everyone has seen?

  • Why does review time spike on Fridays?
  • Which adoption signal should we watch first?
  • Why do our estimates keep missing the time and coordination required for integration work?

30–40 minutes agenda

A complete path from framing the room to assigning one concrete follow-up.

  1. 01

    Frame the review

    Name the sprint or project being reviewed, restate the purpose of each column, and remind everyone to describe observable events.

    3 minutes
  2. 02

    Write observations silently

    Give everyone uninterrupted time to add one specific observation per card across every column.

    7 minutes
  3. 03

    Share and clarify

    Read the cards column by column and let authors add context without debating solutions yet.

    7 minutes
  4. 04

    Group and vote

    Combine cards that describe the same pattern, then vote for the themes that would most improve the next iteration.

    5 minutes
  5. 05

    Discuss the leading themes

    Explore causes, consequences, and tradeoffs behind the highest-voted themes while making space for dissenting evidence.

    10 minutes
  6. 06

    Commit to one change

    Turn the strongest insight into a small action with an owner, deadline, and signal the team can review next time.

    5 minutes

Use this format when

  • A project carries meaningful uncertainty.
  • The team wants to recognize contributions and still make room for risk.
  • A milestone transition raises questions about what comes next, and the team needs enough room to explore them before planning.

Choose another format when

  • The team needs one narrow process decision.
  • A Puzzle needs private investigation before the group can discuss it with enough context to use the session well.
  • The session is too short to cover four distinct perspectives with care.

Facilitation tips

  • Keep Wishes close to what the team can influence.
  • Draw a clear line between possible Risks and problems already happening, since the team needs different language for each one.
  • Make each Appreciation specific to a behavior or contribution.
  • A Puzzle can stay open while evidence is missing.
  • Give someone ownership of the investigation for the Puzzle the team selects, along with a clear point to report back.

Useful variations

Release WRAP

Keep Wishes and Risks focused on launch readiness, adoption, operations, and support.

Team WRAP

Review collaboration, skills, workload, and working agreements.

Async WRAP

Gather input ahead of time, then use the live session to connect Risks with Puzzles.

Before the retro

Recommended warm-up

This or That icebreaker game preview

This or That

Use a quick, low-pressure choice round before the retrospective begins.

Play the warm-up

Frequently asked questions

What does WRAP stand for in retrospectives?

WRAP stands for Wishes, Risks, Appreciations, and Puzzles, the four perspectives the team discusses during the retrospective.

What is a Puzzle in WRAP?

A Puzzle is an unresolved question or a surprising pattern. The team needs more evidence before choosing a solution, so the Puzzle stays open until someone investigates the pattern.

How are Wishes different from actions?

A Wish describes the future the team wants. Once the group prioritizes it, they still need to write a small action and give it an owner.

When should a team use WRAP?

Use WRAP for an uncertain project or transition that needs aspiration, risk, recognition, and inquiry in the same conversation.

Related resources

Run this WRAP Retrospective

Open the ready-made columns, invite the team, collect observations, vote, and leave with an owned improvement.

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