Start, Stop, Continue Retrospective

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The stop start continue retrospective is an action-oriented retrospective style, generating an immediate list of practical ideas for continuous improvement. This retrospective technique hones in on the plus/delta aspects and is a must have tool for any scrum master or project manager.

A great way of introducing the start stop continue thinking style is to use the metaphor of a car at a traffic light (green for start, red for stop and orange for continue). This exercise allows you to reallocate time and resources to where it matters the most.

Example Start Stop Continue Retrospective

Stop – List ideas that are not delivering results or might be driving people a little crazy – such as unnecessary bureaucracy.
Start – List ideas that the team should be doing but are not doing, innovative ideas worth discussing to address current problems.
Continue – List ideas that are creating value or should not be dismissed yet because the outcome is not yet known.

As best practice, remember to set the stage and ensure that people are reminded that is not a process of blame, but for identifying areas for change. If you have run this retrospective method several times before, you should see greater fidelity of ideas. If there are recurring items, this should be a treated as a red flag.

Facilitation Tips

Trigger questions – Use these “inspiration” questions to power up your team think tank (originally proposed by David Ciccarelli)

Stop
- What is something on your to do list that you never get to?
- If we lost a person in our project team, what would we have to lose to still meet deadlines?
- What’s something that is driving you crazy?
Start
- A new person has joined our project team. What would be a new task that they could be assigned?
- Our budget has now doubled. What should we do?
- Good news, our customer has extended our deadline. What’s something new we could include to delight them?
Continue
- What activities in this project are giving you the most joy?
- Whats something that we do that defines and promotes our culture?
- What is something that our customer loves us doing?

Want something simpler and faster? Consider the condensed start stop retrospective format instead.

How to run a Stop Start Continue retrospective in TeamRetro

Start your retrospective in a click
Log into TeamRetro and choose your sprint retrospective template.

Invite your team easily – no separate accounts needed

Send an email invite, a link or add to your Slack channel to get people started quickly. SSO options are also available.

Time to brainstorm

Each team member can now brainstorm individually under each topic. This avoids group think and allows everyone to have their say. They can indicate when they have finished, or you can set a timer so that you know when to move onto the next stage.

Group related ideas

Drag and drop related ideas to combine them for easier voting. TeamRetro can also automatically suggest ideas that are similar, saving you and your team valuable time.

Vote independently to avoid anchoring

Each team member votes on what they would most like to discuss further. The results won’t be displayed to everyone until you advance to Discuss.

Discuss the most important things first
You and your team discuss the top voted ideas and can capture deep dive comments. Presentation mode allows you to walk your team through ideas one-by-one and keep the conversation focused.

Review and create actions

Easily facilitate discussion by bringing everyone onto the same page. Create action items, assign owners and due dates that will carry through for review at the next retrospective.

Share the results
Once you have finished your retro, you can share the results and actions with the team. Your retro will be stored so you can revisit them as needed.

Congratulations! You’ve just run a retro like a boss.

Want more? Read on.

Log into TeamRetro and choose your sprint retrospective template.