KALM Retrospective incl. example
You are looking for the “KALM Keep Add Less More Retrospective” for your agile team? Great, then you’ve come to the right place - Let me explain it briefly 👆🏽
KALM (Keep Add Less More)
The 4 questions that are asked at a KALM retrospective:
First things first: KALM is a simple acronym for “Keep Add Less More” - Who would have thought? 😂 The KALM retro is known for its simplicity and effectiveness.
This is what the retrospective usually looks like on a digital whiteboard or on paper:
<figure> <figcaption><em>Whiteboard Vorlage - KALM (Keep Add Less More) Retrospektive</em></figcaption> </figure>
As you can see, even the design is kept rather simple. But as we all know, the devil is in the details (or should I say the strength?)👀
Here are some short examples for all four questions: “Keep? - Add? - Less? - More?”
Keep: What should we do as before?
✅Example: You changed your daily, asking only one question. This produced better results, so you should keep it.
Add: What should we start with?
✅ Example: You have the feeling that not everyone in your team dares to speak up, there is a lack of so-called psychological safety . So you could start by performing an agile Team Health Check in 3 steps in your team. 👉🏽 More info on: “ psychological safety ” or “ Team health check in 3 steps %E2%80%9C
Less: What should we do less of?
✅ Example: You were not satisfied with the amount of meetings you held and other activities were neglected. You should hold fewer / only the most important meetings.
More: What should we do more of?
✅ Example: It’s good to look at agile metrics, such as your team’s velocity, from time to time - This hasn’t happened much lately! We should get better at keeping an eye on our metrics.
👉🏽More info on: “ agile metrics %E2%80%9C
You can also find this retrospective in our Echometer tool and conduct it online with your team (without registration)🎉
KALM Retrospective: How the retro works
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Random Icebreaker (2-5 minutes)
Echometer provides you with a generator for random check-in questions.
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Review of open actions (2-5 minutes)
Before starting with new topics, you should talk about what has become of the measures from past retrospectives to check their effectiveness. Echometer automatically lists all open action items from past retros.
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Discuss retro topics
Use the following open questions to collect your most important findings. First, everyone does it themselves, covered. Echometer allows you to reveal each column of the retro board individually in order to then present and group the feedback.
- Keep: What should we keep?
- Add: What should we add?
- Less: What should we reduce?
- More: What should we expand?
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Catch-all question (Recommended)
So that other topics also have a place:
- What else would you like to talk about in the retro?
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Prioritization / Voting (5 minutes)
On the retro board in Echometer, you can easily prioritize the feedback with voting. The voting is of course anonymous.
-
Define actions (10-20 minutes)
You can create a linked action via the plus symbol on a feedback. Not sure which measure would be the right one? Then open a whiteboard on the topic via the plus symbol instead to brainstorm root causes and possible measures.
-
Checkout / Closing (5 minutes)
Echometer enables you to collect anonymous feedback from the team on how helpful the retro was. This creates the ROTI score ("Return On Time Invested"), which you can track over time.
KALM Retrospective
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**Daki Retrospective vs. KALM Retrospective🔍
You may have noticed that at first glance there is no big difference between the DAKI model “drop add keep improve” and the KALM retrospective “keep add less more”.
But the devil is in the detail:
Improve vs. More✨
At first glance, you might not see the difference here, but as I said before, the devil is in the details.
For me, the difference here is that you can do more of something but keep the quality (we should talk to each other more) or get better at something and keep the quantity (we should talk to each other better/nicer).
And even if the word doesn’t seem that different at first glance - the unconscious processes that take place in you differ considerably. In the best case, you ask yourself both questions from time to time. What should you improve? What should you do more of? Because with this combination you will become the winner.🏆
Less vs. Drop
Now we can take a closer look at “Less vs. Drop”.
Personally, I don’t like meetings. They massively reduce my productivity. But not talking (drop) is of course not an option in a team.
In this case, I wanted to spend less time in meetings, but maintain the flow of information in the team. Speaking “Less” but saying “More” was the solution for me here. 🗣
Of course, there are also things that you really shouldn’t do. Are you using a tool that doesn’t help the team? Drop it!
As you can see, the devil is in the detail here too.💡
Conclusion - KALM Retrospective⚡
I don’t know about you, but for me, the KALM (Keep Add Less More) retrospective is one of my favorite retrospective formats. It doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles and fulfills the purpose of a good retro.
If you like the KALM retrospective, you’ll probably like this too: 54 retrospectives for beginners and professionals.
Would you like to start your first KALM retrospective right away? Then try out our Echometer tool for the continuous improvement of agile teams:
KALM Retrospective: How the retro works
-
Random Icebreaker (2-5 minutes)
Echometer provides you with a generator for random check-in questions.
-
Review of open actions (2-5 minutes)
Before starting with new topics, you should talk about what has become of the measures from past retrospectives to check their effectiveness. Echometer automatically lists all open action items from past retros.
-
Discuss retro topics
Use the following open questions to collect your most important findings. First, everyone does it themselves, covered. Echometer allows you to reveal each column of the retro board individually in order to then present and group the feedback.
- Keep: What should we keep?
- Add: What should we add?
- Less: What should we reduce?
- More: What should we expand?
-
Catch-all question (Recommended)
So that other topics also have a place:
- What else would you like to talk about in the retro?
-
Prioritization / Voting (5 minutes)
On the retro board in Echometer, you can easily prioritize the feedback with voting. The voting is of course anonymous.
-
Define actions (10-20 minutes)
You can create a linked action via the plus symbol on a feedback. Not sure which measure would be the right one? Then open a whiteboard on the topic via the plus symbol instead to brainstorm root causes and possible measures.
-
Checkout / Closing (5 minutes)
Echometer enables you to collect anonymous feedback from the team on how helpful the retro was. This creates the ROTI score ("Return On Time Invested"), which you can track over time.
KALM Retrospective
