Dealing with complex projects requires special strategies for better optimization of time and resources. For this, companies and startups from various industries create a scrum team and agile techniques to ensure the most efficiency of each team member.

One of the most used techniques is the sprint retrospective. These retrospective meetings are a great way to decide the best course of action for a project and how to do it in the shortest time.

In this article, we will show you how to create efficient sprint retrospective templates for your agile teams using simple steps. Follow each one carefully, and you’ll notice numerous positive impacts in your next sprint. 

The sprint retrospective template (or agile retrospective template) is a document created by the project manager or scrum master to make a recap to the team members about the last agile strategy. This document is usually created and presented right after the sprint review and can indicate problems about the previous sprint and tell the whole team what needs to change for the next one.

This document can either be created physically or online, with digital sticky notes, for example. There are numerous ways of doing sprint retrospectives, and more important than how to do it is the insights and results you can generate through these agile retrospectives.

Many business owners and managers don’t run sprint retrospectives, which can be a critical mistake if you’re looking for the most efficient way to work and want to improve your team’s mental health. These documents can generate numerous benefits for your company that will, directly and indirectly, affect the productivity and development of new projects. Some retrospective templates also feature spaces dedicated for the team members to tell what they did and didn’t like about the project, how they felt during the process, and why.

One of these advantages is that by running these retrospectives, you can clearly see which aspects of the development need to be worked on, generating continuous improvement. Moreover, if you continue the sprint retrospective template implementation for a long time, you can generate insights on what to change for the next sprint and which methods tend to be more effective.

Sometimes people might get confused about the types of retrospective templates and their differences. If this is your case, don’t worry.

We will show you some of the main retrospective templates available and what is the focus of each one. Here is a quick explanation of these formats:

Starfish Retrospective Template

The starfish template has five main categories that focus on the future development of your company and projects done. It is based on your previous experiences to reflect on how they can shape future strategies.

A starfish comprises five main categories that must be discussed in the retrospective meeting. Here is each one of them:

• What to Do More of

• What to Do Less of

• Start Doing

• Stop Doing

• Keep Doing

Sailboat Retrospective Template

The sailboat is a great model to give you an overview of your workflow and the main problems it generates. Its primary focus is team behavior evaluation and can cause numerous insights into your primary issues and what you’re doing right.

The sailboat retrospective template is composed of four main categories. They are:

• Goal - What you want to achieve

• Wind - What is helping you to go forward

• Anchor - What is holding you back and preventing the goal accomplishment

• Rocks - Risk you might face along the way

Start, Stop, Continue Sprint Retrospective Template

The start, stop, and continue model is one of the most simple to build yet can be effective for numerous projects and companies. As the name suggests, the model is composed of three main categories that generate reflections and insights about the team’s actual development model and how it can be improved for better project management.

It doesn’t provide a root cause analysis of the problems but can be an excellent option for quick actions that will improve the team’s performance. The three pieces of information that build the document are:

• What the company isn’t doing but needs to start in the future

• What the company needs to stop doing

• What the company is doing and must continuously improve

Now that you have seen the main types of sprint retrospective templates, it is time to start working on your own document. We will show you the main steps to ensure an effective document that generates the best results for your company.

Follow each one of the following items carefully. The main steps are:

Choose a Template That Fits Your Objective

We have seen the various different sprint retrospectives with different categories and areas of focus. When building a template for your team members, you must ensure you use the best type of document for your goals.

It is highly recommended to evaluate your objective and the main pain points when it comes to project development. With this, you can decide which template type suits you best.

Collect the Main Information Regarding the Last Sprint

Now you need to gather the feedback generated from the last sprint done by the team. You can also use a retrospective template after a project that didn’t use the agile methodology during its development.

Regardless of the methodology and strategy used, in this phase of the process, you will listen to employees and clients. The primary objective is to gain a comprehensive understanding of their perspectives, specifically identifying aspects they appreciated as well as those they found unsatisfactory.

With this, you can tell what needs to change and what you want to see implemented in the future sprints. The main objective of this kind of document is to brainstorm ideas on how to make processes more optimized and healthy for the team.

Define Who Is Responsible for the Document

Although the retrospective will be discussed with the entire Agile team, its edition, and crafting should be restricted to a few people to avoid mistakes and keep it organized. The parties responsible for editing the document and adding the necessary changes are the project managers and scrum teams, but this might change from one project to another.

This person will collect all feedback from the members and quickly make any edition requested. It is crucial to choose someone that was involved in the entire process and followed every step of the given project.

Present the Document

Now it’s time to take the document to a proper meeting where you’ll discuss the key takeaways generated by the retrospective and generate new ideas on potential future positive changes.

Remember that this opportunity is created especially for the team members to discuss different perspectives and share ideas that will help the company to keep moving forward.

Generating engagement and encouraging everyone to participate in any decision-making process is important. This way, the team continues exploring new possibilities while working on those that need improvement.

When it comes to the creation of your retrospective document, there are numerous programs that can help with this task. From known software to specialized programs, each one has its own tools and features.

Among all the options available, we highly recommend using Microsoft Word for this task. MS Word not only has the best tools on the market but is also an industry standard, meaning that you won’t need extra software to complete the tasks.

If you don’t have a Microsoft Office activation key, you can get one at RoyalCDKeys for a considerably lower price. This way, you get access to all the features necessary for the project and still save money.

MS Office lets you customize the templates provided below to save time and effort instead of doing everything from scratch!

If you don’t want to create your entire retrospective template from scratch, there is no problem. Here are some templates you can download and edit using Word to fit your needs better.

Ensure the chosen template has everything you need for your retrospective meetings and reflects your goals. Here are some template examples:

Template #1

Simple sprint retrospective template. A document containing all essential categories for evaluating what needs to change for the next project. 

Get this template

Template #2

Sailboat retrospective model template. Document featuring the sailboat format of retrospective with background illustration for each category.

Get this template

Template #3

Minimalistic agile retrospective document. Template featuring a minimalistic design for taking note of the main topics of an agile project. 

Get this template

Having a meeting to discuss what went right and what needs to change for the next project is one of the best ways to keep your company constantly improving. And the retrospective template can be the perfect support tool for this task.

To ensure it reflects the actual situation of your team members and their performance, the document must be correctly crafted. From the type of template to the feedback gathered, everything will impact the final results of your meeting.

Now that you know everything you need. It is time to start creating your retrospective template. Follow all the steps, and you’ll have the perfect document to improve your work quality.