54 Fun Retrospective Templates That Spark Fresh Insights

🧟‍♀️ One thing up front: Find 5 creative Halloween retrospective templates right here ! 🎃

Explore a variety of fun retrospective templates - and the best part? You can try them all for free using our online retro board software.

Click here on the category that best fits and let’s go:

What should be part of every retrospective? It should reflect on the work from a different angle. Have you ever had a retro with extremely low energy levels? Almost no feedback came? Right - nobody wants that. That’s why you need new perspectives on a regular basis. And that’s why you’ll find a series of retrospective methods in this article that you didn’t know yet: If you want to challenge your team morale, do the “Team Morale Health Check”. If you need a fresh perspective, do the 7 Dwarfs Retrospective. Or is everyone on vacation? Then go with the vacation Method. The formats will tickle the creative veins of your team - and definitely maximize the probability for one: Valuable Action Items . Let’s start with some hints and tips before diving deeper into our fun retro ideas.

Sprint Retrospective Meeting: A few hints before we start🚦

If you don’t have any experience with agile retrospectives or with retro templates, you can read through our short and crisp guide: Retrospectives - All you need to know Good to know: A Scrum retrospective usually lasts between 45 (up to 5 team members) and 90 minutes (up to 12 team members). If possible, you should allow even more time. In any case, you should actively timebox in each of the retro phases. If you are not familiar with these, you can find out more about them here: The 5 phases of a retrospective. If you often have problems with timeboxing, here are some tips for you: How to conduct a short retrospective. Against this background: Moderating the retrospective under time pressure is no fun and may even be harmful. So prepare your questions, notes and working materials well. If the retro method takes place in a distributed team, you may be wondering: How can you conduct a retrospective online? You can find an answer to this here: retro board tool comparison. But to make it short: Our recommendation for this is our tool: Echometer. You will find a button directly next to the retrospective methods below, which leads to our tool. If you are looking for a template for a Sprint retrospective ppt (i.e. a PowerPoint presentation), you can also simply copy the questions and the image of the respective method into a PowerPoint presentation. It would be even easier if you simply click on the button - whichever you prefer :)

Scrum Retrospective Meeting: How to start a retrospective meeting 🏁

Before we get to the main part of this post: How do you start a retrospective? If we look back again (The 5 phases of a retrospective), this is quite easy to answer. You start with an icebreaker, with retro check-in questions. If you need some inspiration, just have a look here: The best retro check-ins for any context. “Setting the stage” after the check-in questions is an important foundation for the retrospective formats that follow.

The Best Retrospective Templates: Classics

Let’s start with the best retrospective methods - or at least with the five most common ones. These are also particularly well suited for beginners or for teams that don’t have so much retro experience yet. Further down are the methods for retrospective pros, which will also help against retro fatigue.

Let’s start with the classics: I’m talking about the retrospective method “Start Stop Keep” (also known as “Start Stop Continue”), the retrospective “Loved Learned longed for” (also known as “Retro Loved Learned liked Longed For” or 4l retrospective), the Scrum retrospective with the 3 central questions “What went well”, the sailboat retrospective, the “mad sad glad” retrospective and “Thumbs up, thumbs down, new ideas and recognition”. You can find more about this below!

The “What Went Well” retrospective is probably the most popular or well-known of all the ideas for retrospective. It is based on the pattern that we find in many other retrospectives, but simply without all the bells and whistles around it. With a view to the last sprint cycle, these 3 questions are asked. ( You can find more advantages of the “What went well” retrospective here… )

The “Mad Sad Glad” retrospective method has a similar pattern, but uses three typical emotions to make it a little more interesting for the team. It’s your decision whether you want to use the English terms or the German ones.

The Scrum Retrospective Start Stop Keep is also known as the Start Stop Continue Retrospective. I highly recommend making it a “Keep Stop Start” retro (in that order), because you start with something positive and end with ideas for new action items:

The “Retrospective liked learned lacked longed for” is called 4l-Retrospective, because the 4 key questions are each composed of a word that starts with “l” - obviously. When we look at the last few weeks:

Now, with this retrospective idea we are getting more creative making use of a metaphor: The sailboat. Imagine your team or your last sprint as a sailboat.

The DAKI Retrospective, standing for the English words “Drop Add Keep Improve”, is a simple acronym that is also classically used as a retrospective method. (More detailed information about the DAKI Retrospective: 2 tips for the DAKI retrospective incl. examples )

The “The Three Little Pigs” Retrospective is based on the fairy tale of the same name, in which 3 pigs build three houses from completely different materials. Of course, the three houses are built differently robust. The question is - what material are the results in your team built from?

The starfish Sprint Retrospective is particularly visually interesting: 5 questions are asked, which can be optimally divided into the columns of a starfish. The Sprint Retrospective “Starfish” tends to take a little longer with 5 questions.

The “What Went Well” retrospective is probably the most popular or well-known of all the ideas for retrospective. It is based on the pattern that we find in many other retrospectives, but simply without all the bells and whistles around it. With a view to the last sprint cycle, these 3 questions are asked:

So, thumbs up for these classics? If it’s more of a “thumbs down”, you might like the following ideas for retrospective, which are even more about fun and creativity. There are some slightly playful retrospective methods but also a few health checks (more about Agile team health checks here).

Fun Sprint Retrospective Templates: 5 Health-Check-Radar Templates

A radar chart is a nice overview to show the results of Team Health Check’s - and as we are developing a retrospective tool that focuses on continuous health checks based on psychology, we can help with that. Here you can find a few retrospective ideas including radar charts.

The Spotify Health Check (based on the Spotify model) is one of the classics when it comes to frameworks to scale agile. The nice thing about it: The Spotify Health Check Retrospective can be carried out in tribes (several teams) as well as in individual teams.

The agile values and principles belong to the basics of a Scrum course. Only when you live up to them, you can reach higher agile maturity levels reach. This health check helps you to reflect on the 5 agile Scrum values from a different perspective with your team and to make them measurable - see below for an insight.

Netflix has created a unique corporate culture created that is known for its innovation. And “innovation speed is the only thing that matters in the long run,” as Elon Musk puts it. In this respect, feel free to do a Health Check Retrospective inspired by Netfli to check your innovation “health”.

“Agile Being over Agile Doing” or “it depends on the agile mindset not the agile processes” - we often hear something like that from Agile Coaches (which you should question - more about that in our eBook “ 12 workshops on team flow & mindset change ”). With this retro, you can start to promote the right growth mindset.

Since Project Aristotle is from Google Psychological safety known to correlate closely with the success of teams. There are concrete behavioral anchors that will help you measure and discuss psychological safety in your team - good luck!

You may be satisfied in the team - but what does it look like when you go into a little more detail regarding team spirit? This retro helps to shed some light on it from different perspectives in a more objective way. So that you can especially creative action items without much effort. You could say it is food for your team maturation process.

Kanban is one of the best known and most effective agile frameworks besides Scrum. Often the implementation seems simple - but really mastering the method is really difficult. Although it’s worth it! Check in the Kanban health check retrospectiv e you can reflect how good you actually are.

Approximately 75% of IT teams use Scrum or a Scrum-inspired development process. But it is not that easy to implement the framework successfully (see Zombie Scrum). We don’t want you to become Zombie’s which is why we created the Scrum Health Check retrospective in the Our tool the Scrum Health Check Retro - have fun reflecting!

Playful Agile Retrospective Templates Based on Games

Now you know the maybe best or at least most common retrospective methods. Since agile teams usually like to use a new method regularly (or at least their Scrum Masters or Agile Coaches 😉), you will find one or the other newly developed, playful retrospective questions below - fun guaranteed.

Everyone loves games. Why not use some retrospective scrum games to trigger interesting new thoughts in your team? Of course, you should make sure that everyone knows the games that our retrospective scrum games are based on.

Racing is as unpredictable as today’s work. Use this fun scrum retrospective meeting template to analyze what lays ahead of you - in a Mario style!

As a retrospective

As a future perspective

Maybe some have vivid memories of playing Pacman. Let’s use them to take a fresh look at our teamwork - with these retro questions:

Work often feels like a game: With every level (sprint), things get harder. But equally, the game character (our team) develops their strengths to rise up to the challenge.

At this point, a quick note: If you don’t know where to start with all these ideas and games for retrospectives, check out the following video. There, our co-founder and psychologist Christian develops a ranking of the best retrospective templates - a top 10, in which there are big differences.

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Tetris is a fun computer game with the goal to puzzle under pressure. Sounds like work? Well, it kind of is.

If these retrospective ideas don’t fit into your team Tetris puzzle, then I have a few more pieces for you.

But before we continue, here’s a quick reference to our last video. Ultimately, one of the main goals of regular retros is to improve your team’s performance. But how do you actually achieve this holistically? I explain an important mental model to answer this question in part two of our free People Development Online Training course:

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Fun Retrospective Questions for different Times of the Year

Sometimes it’s scalding hot outside, or bitterly cold. This inevitably changes the atmosphere in which one works. The most beautiful are the retrospectives that match the mood of the year. That’s why we have developed retrospective templates for the 4 seasons especially for you.

Retrospectives for the summer

In the best case, your team scrum sprint feels like how you imagine summer. A positive vibe everywhere, everything is working smoothly. Although there are some things that make you sweat. This template for retrospective meeting is the right one for the summer:

Many of your colleagues were or will be on vacation? Then a retrospective question in this regard might be the right fit. Because even leisure time can be stressful. Let’s view our last sprint like vacation time…

Salty water, sun, waiting for the next wave. Surfing can be a lot of fun and look so effortless. How did your team catch the last wave? Are you prepared to catch the next one and ride it all the way to the beach?

A road trip all the way to… well, to the destination. The main thing is to arrive. Right? Is it just about the destination, or isn’t the journey somehow the destination too? Reflect on your last stage or the last sprint with the agile Roadtrip Retrospective.

Grilling outdoors - that’s what you imagine summer to be. But to create the perfect grilling experience, it takes a lot. If your team likes to grill, then the following questions will spark creative thoughts.

Fall Retrospectives

After summer inevitably comes autumn. A time of change, but also of new beginnings and gratitude. It’s best to make sure you’re prepared for all eventualities early on.

“Fools rush in, wise men wait, wise men go into the garden” - as various writers have put it. Tending a garden is a complex matter. Pruning shoots at the right time, planting seeds, harvesting roots is an art. Similar to successful teamwork.

You can’t look at things one-dimensionally. This is nicely illustrated by the example of the rose: It may look beautiful, but it can also hurt quite a bit. The perfect sprint increment also creates a balance between requirements and possibilities.

Retrospectives for the winter

Winter can be a long, hard, cold time. Or it can be a time of coziness and winter sports. So it offers a lot of potential for creative questions that help you reflect on your agile sprint. 

By the way, if you’re already approaching February, our Valentine’s Day retros might be something for you (The post: 3 fun Valentine’s Day retrospectives ).

It can be quite tedious to build a snowman iteratively, step by step, ball by ball, sprint by sprint. And then there’s not even any guarantee that it will actually hold together. Let alone whether it looks as friendly as we imagined.

Sledding is a lot of fun… as long as you’re fit, can see enough, know the route and the sled holds up. Do you feel like the last sprints went pretty much zig-zag? Then the agile toboggan retrospective might be something for you.

Spring Retrospectives

In spring, everything is suddenly so beautiful again, so fresh. Apparently, the perception changes, you fall in love with everything anew. It’s like putting on rose-colored glasses. But what if you put on other glasses as well?

If you like the metaphor, our Valentine’s Day retrospective methods or “love retros” might also be something for you (to the article: 3 fun Valentine’s Day retrospectives ).

The Hot Air Balloon Retrospective is one of the creative classics in the retro toolkit. It fits well in the spring, when you ride a balloon for the first time - but of course also in other seasons.

Quarterly retrospective, project milestones, retrospective annual review, the retrospective retrospective: With Marie Kondō, we have not only started to clean up our living room and kitchen. We can also take her with us to our workplace to bring order to the chaos - with these retro questions:

Creative Retrospective Templates for your Agile Scrum Sprint

Scrum teams that have been doing retrospectives forever sometimes need a bit of variety to get them going again. See: Retro fatigue . With these creative retrospective ideas, you are sure to bring a smile to your team members’ faces - and probably also creative ideas and new perspectives!

Once again, recommended: Feel free to change the remote retrospective format, leave some of the questions out and adapt them to your specific needs and context! The more the virtual agile retrospective ideas fit your context, the better.

Soccer is all about good teamwork. The right people have to be on the pitch. And yet, sometimes you just have a bad day. If your team has some soccer fans, this agile sprint retrospective fits the bill. ( More information about this fun retrospective can be found here… )

Escape Rooms have just the right balance of “pressure” and “fun,” like a good retrospective. If the team feels like it’s somehow stuck, it’s worth trying to break out of its own situation. Like with the Escape Game.

This has nothing to do with the fairy tale of the Seven Dwarfs, but the results can still be fabulously good: Each team member takes 7 different perspectives and is thus virtually forced to empathize: Because each of the 7 dwarfs has an emotional slant from which they view the status quo (e.g. the last Scrum Sprint):

Sometimes, work is like theater. There is so much drama involved, people play a role instead of being themselves. Let’s view work from a theater perspective by starting with this retrospective question:

Everyone has to go to a doctor at some time for a health check. Doesn’t matter if you are sick or not. In this template for a retrospective meeting, we imagine our last sprint is a doctor’s patient.

If you are looking for a classical team health check including agile metrics and radar chart, I recommend checking out our ‘team health check kit.

A good team is like a band - perfectly coordinated, in rhythm, knowing exactly what the audience loves. Let’s say you’ve practiced a certain piece in the last sprint.

Writing requires creativity, patience and many feedback loops until the masterpiece is finished. Let’s use one feedback loop, your sprint, and have a look at the progress of your project by starting with this retrospective question:

Are you professionals? The restaurant of a chef works smoothly like a machine. Every dish is served perfectly, with optimal timing and a constantly fresh taste. Make your retro like a chef de cuisine - delicious:

The last thing you want is to put out unforeseen flames at work and be pulled away from your core tasks. But it still happens regularly. Let’s prevent it by starting with this retrospective question:

Every sprint tells a little story - with ups and downs. This retro method is not just for bookworms.

A president has a lot to deal with. It comes from all sides, but you must always keep calm - and ideally keep an eye on the visionary future. Let’s put ourselves in the “Yes, we can” mentality.

You can create incredible energies through nuclear power. But it is a fragile process. Let’s make sure we keep it under control and deliver the positive green energy we are aiming for. If we look at our last sprint as if it were such a fragile process, what do we find?

Everyone has dreamed of time travel. Either to meet an interesting historical figure - or to change history. Let’s change our last sprint - at least theoretically:

Alright, did you come back to the future? I mean, into the present? Hopefully, some of these retrospective meeting techniques triggered some visionary thoughts. Now let’s dive into some formats that will help to reflect on a different level.

Agile Project Retrospective Templates: Zooming out & Milestones

The sprint retrospective formats we just gave you are all focused on facilitating retros about the last scrum sprint. But how about quarterly retrospective ideas or a release retrospective meeting?

Or how about interesting retrospective ideas for new agile teams? In short, formats that will help you reflect on a bigger picture level, for example after a 3 to 6 month project milestone. There are so many different use cases (I did not even mention the retrospective meeting in testing).

Don’t worry - that’s exactly why we’ve prepared some retro ideas for you. We recommend adapting these retro questions to your needs and your context.

Project Kick-Off, the Retrospective Retrospective: We are pilots. On a journey - and each sprint is the next flight. We are specialists, highly qualified for our job. And we should make sure that we can always land safely. With these retro questions:

Project Kick-Off, Teambuilding: Are you looking for a retrospective method for new agile teams? Then you have just found it. At the beginning of a team’s life cycle, everything is so new. There are so many thoughts going through our heads, emotions running through our bodies. Let’s try to structure them. Let’s see what we can make of it - with these retro questions:

Quarterly retrospective idea, Project Milestone, Project ending, Release retrospective format: Sometimes, work is like a marathon. You did not train for the bad weather and the goal still feels far away. Use this retrospective meeting format in case you are on a long journey:

Quarterly retrospective idea, Project Milestone, Release retrospective Scrum: Michelangelo was a great artist, known for his beautiful paintings. You as a team are basically drawing a picture as well. How do you make sure your work will be a masterpiece?

All right, Michelangelo. Did you have a good release retrospective meeting? Or a juicy retrospective meeting in testing? Anyway, I hope you are happy with your artwork.

By the way, if you want to develop your team holistically, then you also need to improve psychological safety in the team. In this video, our co-founder Christian explains 4 team and one-to-one exercises you can do to increase psychological safety.

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Fun Sprint Retrospective Templates: Conclusion

Once again, what should a retrospective include? It should include the 5 phases I mentioned above - best case with a creative and interesting retrospective idea. We hope that you will try out some of the mentioned agile team retrospective ideas. Once again: If you are searching for a sprint retrospective template ppt (i.e., powerpoint), feel free to copy every retrospective question into powerpoint. 

You should now at least know the best (or most well-known) agile retrospective ideas: Start Stop Keep (also known as “Start Stop Continue”), the Liked Learned Lacked retrospective (also known as the 4l retrospective), the sailboat retrospective, and the Mad Sad Glad retrospective.

Scrum Retrospective Meeting: Some last hints

If you have any more retrospective examples or ideas for an agile team retrospective, or would like to give us feedback after you have gone through each retrospective method - just write to us. In case you are generally new to retrospectives (a beginner Scrum Master or Agile Coach), I highly recommend having a look at our free eBook: 20+ tips for really successful retrospectives . 

And if you’re looking for a free online tool for retrospectives, you may have seen that Echometer is just that.

Have fun trying out the different retro methods in our tool 😄🙌