Start Stop Continue Retrospective

What is the Start Stop Continue Retrospective?

Start Stop Continue is a retrospective format built on three questions: what should your team start doing, what should it stop doing, and what should it keep doing? Every answer is a behavior someone can act on, so the meeting ends with a short list of changes instead of a long list of complaints. Teams use it in agile retrospectives because it needs almost no explanation. Everyone adds ideas to three columns: things to begin (Start), things to drop (Stop) and things that are working and worth keeping (Continue). The structure keeps the conversation on what people actually do, which makes it easy to turn the top items into actions with an owner. It works best when you want concrete changes out of the meeting, with the wins on the table next to the problems. The Continue column is the one teams rush, and it's the one that stops a good habit from quietly disappearing. You'll also see this exercise written as "Stop Start Continue." It's the same thing: the three categories are identical and you can run them in whichever order your team prefers. Some facilitators lead with Stop to clear away what isn't working before deciding what to begin. Others lead with Start to keep the tone forward-looking. Either way, you finish with a short list of behaviors to begin, end and keep. Start Stop Continue is useful well beyond the sprint retrospective. Because it produces specific, behavior-level feedback, teams use the same Start Stop Continue template for peer feedback, manager one-on-ones, project post-mortems and personal goal-setting. In a one-on-one, for example, a report might ask their manager to "start sharing the weekly priorities earlier," "stop scheduling reviews on Friday afternoons" and "continue the open Q&A at standup." The free template above gives everyone a private space to add ideas before the team groups them, votes and agrees on actions together.