The ‘Keep Stop Start’ Retrospective incl. direct access

Many Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches are looking for the keywords “Keep Stop Start” retrospective - I can help you with that.

Retrospective Keep Doing Stop Doing

The three questions to ask

The smarter ones among you will have already guessed that the “Start Stop Continue” or “Keep Stop Start” consists of three questions. As a Scrum Master and psychologist, I personally prefer the “Keep Stop Start” retrospective (more on that below). It’s pretty simple - you ask the development team the following questions:

• Keep: [Optional: Looking back at the last sprint…] What should we continue doing?
• Stop: What should we stop doing?
• Start: What should we start doing?

You are welcome to give the team more context (e.g. by saying “looking back at the last sprint or the last few weeks”) when you ask these questions.

By the way, you can do this retrospective online using our retrospective tool Echometer now (no registration necessary):

The order of the questions - Start Stop Keep Retrospective

As mentioned earlier, I prefer the “Keep Stop Start” retrospective compared to the “Start Stop Continue” or “Start Stop Keep” retrospective. Why? Because of the order of the questions. The last question is particularly important.

If you ask the team what they want to “start” last, you can perfectly lead to the last phase of the retrospective over - the potential actions. If you only ask what you want to “continue”, it doesn’t have that nice side effect.

By the way, here you can find 7 tips for great action items in retrospectives .

Conclusion - Retrospective Keep Doing Stop Doing

The “Keep Stop Start” retrospective is one of the most common retrospective methods. I generally recommend surprising your team regularly with a different set of retrospective questions. We have a blog post with 32 kickass retrospective ideas for beginners and professionals. written - feel free to check it out!

How to

Keep stop start retro: How the retro works

1. Random Icebreaker (2-5 minutes)

   Echometer provides you with a generator for random check-in questions.

2. 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.

3. 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.

   • Continue: What should we keep?
   • Stop: What should we stop doing?
   • Start: What should we start doing?

4. Catch-all question (Recommended)

   So that other topics also have a place:

   • What else would you like to talk about in the retro?

5. Prioritization / Voting (5 minutes)

   On the retro board in Echometer, you can easily prioritize the feedback with voting. The voting is of course anonymous.

6. 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.

7. 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.

Keep stop start retro

Continue: What should we keep?

Stop: What should we stop doing?

Start: What should we start doing?

Open this retro now Customize...

You can find more retro ideas in our collection 32 Retrospective Methods .