2 tips for the DAKI retrospective incl. examples

You as an Agile Coach or Scrum Master are looking for the “DAKI drop add keep improve retrospective”? Great, then you’ve come to the right place - the DAKI retrospective is one of my personal favorites (I’ll get to that later). But let me briefly explain it first 👆🏽

First things first: DAKI is a simple acronym for “drop add keep improve” - who would have thought? 😂 All kidding aside. The DAKI retro is one of the more unspectacular retrospectives with its 4 pretty simple questions (but you’ll see, these questions pack a punch).
This is what the retrospective usually looks like on a digital whiteboard or on paper:

<figure> <figcaption><em>Whiteboard template - DAKI (Drop Add Keep Improve) Retrospective</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 brief examples for all four questions in advance: “Drop? - Add? - Keep? - Improve?”

Drop: [Optional: Looking at the last sprint / weeks] What should we leave out?

✅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.

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

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.

Improve: What should we do more of?

✅ Example: It’s good to look at agile metrics, like your team’s velocity, from time to time - that 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)🎉

**&#xA;**Daki Retrospective vs. KALM Retrospective🔍

Perhaps you’ve noticed that at first glance there isn’t a big difference between the DAKI model and the KALM retrospective “keep add less more.” 

But buckle up tight, because here’s why I’d choose the DAKI retrospective over the KALM retrospective any day.

 

Improve vs. More✨

At first glance, you might not see the difference here, but as I said before, the devil is in the details.

In my opinion, constant improvement is one of the secrets to personally or as a team “becoming the best version of yourself”. But improvement involves so much more than “doing more of something.”

For example, you can improve in things that are important but not yet as good as you would like them to be. And doing “more” of something is just a tiny fraction of what “improve” includes for me.

And even if the word doesn’t seem that different at first glance - the unconscious processes that take place in you are significantly different. Therefore, “improve” takes home the victory for me here🏆

 

Less vs. Drop��

Now we can take a closer look at “Less vs. Drop” again. When was the last time you did less of something and why? For me, it was reducing the time I spent in meetings. 

Because meetings massively worsened my productivity. Nevertheless, there was a reason why I attended these meetings in the first place: “communication” or “exchange of information”. 

In this case, I wanted to spend less time in meetings, but maintain the flow of information within the team. “Less” meetings were not the right way for me - I had to improve the way information was exchanged with my colleagues (improve according to the DAKI method)🗣

For me, “less” of something is always a sign that I need to improve in that area. 

My credo: Either I improve in something (in this case, by exchanging the same amount of information in less time) or I stop it completely. And hey, that’s exactly what it’s all about - Less vs. Omission?💡

 

Conclusion - DAKI retrospective**⚡**

I don’t know about you, but for me, the DAKI (Drop Add Keep Improve) retrospective is the clear winner and one of my favorite retrospective formats to reflect and become a better team week after week.

If you like the Daki retrospective, you’ll probably like this too: 54 retrospectives for beginners and professionals.

Do you want to start your first DAKI retrospective right away? Then try our Echometer tool for continuous improvement of agile teams: