The Agile 'Starfish' Retrospective explained (with Examples)

Are you, as an Agile Coach or Scrum Master, looking for the Starfish Sprint Retrospective or a template for it? Good choice - the Starfish Retrospective is one of the classics. I’d be happy to explain how it works.

Sprint Retrospective Starfish

The 5 questions to ask in a starfish retrospective

The first thing you should know about the agile Starfish Retrospective: It’s called that because typically 5 questions are asked - represented in the form of a starfish. This is what it usually looks like on a digital whiteboard or on paper.

Each of these 5 areas in the retrospective template represents an area of feedback, usually introduced with a word as a heading (and instruction). You can either ask team members to leave feedback on the outside of the star, as the image indicates - or within the 5 gaps that automatically form with a starfish.

How to

Starfish 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.

   • Keep: [Optional: Looking at the last sprint / weeks] What should we keep doing, keep as it is?
   • Stop: What should we stop doing?
   • Start: What should we start doing?
   • More: What should we do more of?
   • Less: What should we do less of?

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.

Starfish Retro ⭐️

Keep: [Optional: Looking at the last sprint / weeks] What should we keep doing, keep as it is?

Stop: What should we stop doing?

Start: What should we start doing?

More: What should we do more of?

Less: What should we do less of?

Open this retro now

There are the area’s Keep, Stop, Start, More, Less.

• Keep: [Optional: Looking at the last sprint / weeks] What should we keep doing, keep as it is?
  • Example: You changed your daily, asking only one question. This produced better results, so you should keep it.
• Stop: What should we stop doing?
  • Example: E.g., You were not satisfied with this new tool that is supposed to help you prioritize the product backlog. Let’s stop using it.
• Start: What should we start doing?
  • Example: You feel like not everyone feels safe to speak up in your team, psychological safety So you think about implementing a Team health check in 3 steps in your team.
• More: What should we do more of?
  • Example: You love that one of your team members actively gives kudos in meeting. We want more of that from everyone in the team!
• Less: What should we do less of?
  • Example: It is good to look at agile metrics how to look at your team’s velocity - but not in every sprint! That’s way too much. We should do it less often, for example only once a quarter in a retrospective.

By the way, you can also find this retrospective in our Echometer Retro Tool (More on this topic: Starfish Retrospective Tool ) and conduct it online with your team without logging in. Simply click on the “Open this retro now” button above to do so.

You may have noticed that the Starfish Sprint Retrospective is quite similar to the “Keep, Stop, Start” retrospective. But it’s not the same - two words are added and there’s a fancy metaphor behind it 😁.

What to be aware of when doing the Sprint Retrospective Starfish

As I mentioned in the last paragraph, this retrospective format has pretty many questions. Most retrospective ideas have 3 questions, this one has 5. So be sure to set a clear timebox!

Depending on how much time you planned for this retrospective, you might even ask everyone to write out their feedback in a way that is understandable. And then let everyone directly vote on the feedbacks so you only have to talk about those things that are prioritized by the team.

Conclusion - Starfish Retrospective

The sprint retrospective starfish is one of many retrospective ideas, one of the classics. If you like it, you will probably also like these 32 kickass retrospectives for beginners and professionals - right?

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