3 Start Stop Continue Examples and Alternatives

You’ve just searched Google for the “Start Stop Continue Retrospective” or want to see examples and alternatives? Great, then you’ve come to the right place🎉

The Stop Start Continue Retrospective is a classic when it comes to agile retrospectives. Of course, it’s no wonder that one or the other team has already held them many times and is looking for something different (I’ll show you alternatives later)👀.

But just as often it happens that due to the popularity of the Start Stop Continue retrospective, people are looking for examples to make it even better in the future🔍

First things first: From my point of view, the “Start Stop Continue Retro” is an optimization retro. In fact, the three questions asked in the Start Stop Continue Retrospective cover all the basic questions regarding the activities optimization of a Sprint.

🌞What should we launch because it makes the upcoming sprint better?

☔What should we leave alone because it makes the upcoming sprint better?

⚡What should we definitely keep because it worked great?

If you want to try this retrospective or any of 50+ other templates for free, you can do so in our agile team continuous improvement tool:

Start Stop Continue Questions + Examples

As can be seen in the diagram, there are the following three questions of the “Start Stop Continue Retro”👀

What do we want to launch? (Start)⚗️

💡Example: You have the feeling that not everyone in your team dares to speak up. So-called “psychological safety” should therefore be improved. So you could start by carrying out an agile team health check in 3 steps within the team.

👉🏽More info: Psychological safety and Team Health Checks in 3 steps .

Typical examples of start points can also include:

• Weekly micro-feedback sessions to identify problems early.
• A joint review of the sprint goals with clear expectations for all roles.
• Establishing a short “Start of Day” check-in so that everyone on the team feels seen.
• The introduction of an experiment board to transparently record areas for learning.
• Testing new automations for recurring tasks to free up time.

What do we want to let be? (Stop)⛔️

💡Example: You were very unsatisfied with the new tool that is supposed to help with the prioritization & transparency of the Product Backlog. It should definitely not be used any further.

Other things teams should often stop doing:

• Ad hoc meetings without a clear goal that interrupt the sprint flow.
• Too many parallel tasks per person, leading to context switching and delays.
• Ignoring blockers because you hope to solve them “later.”
• Clarifying responsibility for bugs only at the end of the sprint, instead of communicating early.
• Missing feedback loops in the review that prevent lessons learned from being shared.

What do we want to keep? (Continue)✅

💡Example: It’s good to look at agile metrics like your team’s velocity from time to time - that’s been going well lately!

👉🏽More info: Agile metrics

Some habits that teams should continue to cultivate:

• Weekly demo sessions to regularly schedule stakeholders.
• The structured retrospective with clear next steps and responsibilities.
• Shared definitions of Done that keep everyone on the same page.
• Transparent burndown charts so that progress and risks remain visible.
• Knowledge sharing within the team, e.g. via pairing or brown-bag sessions.

As popular as the Start Stop Continue Retro may be, this retrospective can become monotonous. Too much monotony across multiple retrospectives can pose real dangers that go beyond boredom. That’s why we’re giving you a few suitable alternatives below so that this monotony doesn’t even arise💤

Change of perspective: As described in the introduction, the Start Stop Continue Retro is a retro that is very much aimed at optimizing activities. However, agile working is a much more complex topic than just “optimizing activities”🚀

With the Mad Sad Glad Retrospective For example, you can also take a closer look at the negative emotions that prevail in the team during a lean period👻.

👉🏽More info: Mad Sad Glad Retrospective

Also, a retro, like the DAKI (Drop Add Keep Improve) Retro, add another interesting dimension to the Start Stop Continue Retro and thus expand the horizon🌍.

👉🏽More info: DAKI Retro

Or you simply want to approach a retro with a little more fun and therefore choose, for example, the Soccer Retrospective⚽

👉🏽More info: Soccer retro

I could go on with this list forever. If you’re interested in seeing not just these three, but 22 alternatives to the Start Stop Continue retrospective, feel free to read our blog article on them: 22 Refreshing Agile Retrospective Templates in 2023

Conclusion - Start Stop Continue Retrospective

As the examples show, the “Start Stop Continue” Retrospective covers the essential facets of a retrospective well. However, there are also alternative retro formats that highlight other aspects more strongly (e.g. emotions) or simply bring more variety and creativity.

My recommendation: If you are simply looking for a concise retro to reveal optimization potential in your team, then the Start Stop Continue Retrospective is the ideal choice – also very beginner-friendly 🎉

Do you want to start your first Start Stop Continue Retrospective right away? Then try out our Echometer tool for continuous improvement of agile teams💥.