Quick Retrospective Template
Look back at success and failures in order to improve everyday practices.
About the Retrospective template
A Retrospective template is a tool that helps structure positive and negative feedback and plan improvements after a completed project or a working sprint. Teams use Retrospectives to reflect on their ways of working and continuously improve their production by discussing current problems and goals, brainstorming new ideas, and exploring and planning which actions need to happen to keep moving forward.
What is a Retrospective template?
A Retrospective template empowers you to run insightful meetings, take stock of your work, and iterate effectively. The term “retrospective” has gained popularity over the more common “debriefing” and “post-mortem,” since it’s more value-neutral than the other terms. Some teams refer to these meetings as “sprint retrospectives” or “iteration retrospectives,” “agile retrospectives” or “iteration retrospectives.”
Whether you are a scrum team using the agile methodology, or doing a specific type of retrospective (e.g. a mad, sad, glad retrospective), the goals are generally the same: discovering what went well, identifying the root cause of problems you had, and finding ways to do better in the next iteration.
3 benefits of using a Retrospective template
A Retrospective template helps your team solve problems and improve productivity by discussing the challenges you encountered during a sprint. One of the benefits of the retrospective format is that it gives equal power to all team members to open up and present their views.
1. Keep the retrospective organized
Using a Retrospective template helps you avoid common pitfalls. For example, the goal of the retrospective is to brainstorm areas of improvement, but some employees may use the meeting simply to air their grievances. The template functions as a project management tool that allows you to stay on track and bring everyone back to your central questions: What did we do well? How can we improve? What helped us move forward?
2. Incorporate feedback from different perspectives
Moreover, noting these central questions can empower participants to speak up. Use the Retrospective template to foster an environment in which every member of the team feels comfortable sharing their ideas. The Retrospective template is also a good exercise to analyze what held your team back and how could you do things differently.
3. Boost efficiency and set actions
Equally important, the template increases efficiency and cuts down on resource usage. Retrospective meetings tend to be costly, since they demand time and attention from a variety of stakeholders. Using the Retrospective template can help you prepare for the meeting, keep everyone on task, and clarify action items and what to do next. Since Miro’s template auto-saves, you can quickly refer to previous retrospective meetings to ensure you’re not discussing a redundant topic.
How do you use the Miro Retrospective template?
The Miro Retrospective template can help make your next sprints more productive. Apply our template and customize it in a few seconds — all changes will be saved instantly!
Communicate with your team in real-time. You can use the video chat or @mention features to boost engagement. If you have some people writing out physical sticky notes, simply take a photo of the finished whiteboard and upload it to the visual whiteboard.
You can also include other file types such as images, videos, GIFs, and documents to store everything in one place.
Why do I need a Retrospective template?
A retrospective or sprint retrospective template allows you and your team to analyze what worked well and what didn’t in a given project or working sprint. The visual representation of the retrospective contains fields for you and your team to add their points of view on how good or bad the sprint or project was. The template makes it easy to collect feedback and action items for future discussions.
How do you write a Retrospective template?
There is not a ready-made formula when it comes to how to write a retrospective. One of the essential factors for a good Retrospective template is that it looks organized, and everyone inside your team can add their points of view and ideas. Be mindful to write objectively and keep it solution-oriented.
What should I say in a retrospective meeting?
The retrospective meeting should be a safe space for you to expose ideas and come up with solutions. When participating in a sprint retrospective, it’s important to stay as objective as possible. That way, you and your team can improve processes and the way you work together. If a misunderstanding or emotions come to the surface, try to be curious and embrace this state of mind without giving room for venting grievances. Rather, share how you feel and why you feel that way and encourage others to do the same.
Get started with this template right now.
Meeting Notes Template
Works best for:
Business Management, Meetings
When your meeting is a success (and Miro will help make sure it is), participation will run high, brilliant ideas will be had, and decisions will be made. Make sure you don’t miss a single one — use our meeting notes template to track notes and feedback in a centralized place that the whole team can access. Just assign a notetaker before the meeting, identify the discussion topics, and let the notetaker take down the participants, important points covered, and any decisions made.
SMART Goals Template
Works best for:
Prioritization, Strategic Planning, Project Management
Setting goals can be encouraging, but can also be overwhelming. It can be hard to conceptualize every step you need to take to achieve a goal, which makes it easy to set goals that are too broad or too much of a stretch. SMART is a framework that allows you to establish goals in a way that sets you up for success. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. If you keep these attributes in mind whenever you set goals, then you’ll ensure your objectives are clear and reachable. Your team can use the SMART model anytime you want to set goals. You can also use SMART whenever you want to reevaluate and refine those goals.
Burndown Chart Template
Works best for:
Project Management, Agile Workflows, Mapping
Whoa whoa whoa, pace yourself! That means knowing how much work is left—and, based on the delivery date, how much time you’ll have for each task. Perfect for project managers, Burndown Charts create a clear visualization of a team’s remaining work to help get it done on time and on budget. These charts have other big benefits, too. They encourage transparency and help individual team members be aware of their work pace so they can adjust or maintain it.
Example Mapping Template
Works best for:
Product Management, Mapping, Diagrams
To update your product in valuable ways—to recognize problem areas, add features, and make needed improvements—you have to walk in your users’ shoes. Example mapping (or user story mapping) can give you that perspective by helping cross-functional teams identify how users behave in different situations. These user stories are ideal for helping organizations form a development plan for Sprint planning or define the minimum amount of features needed to be valuable to customers.
User Story Map Template
Works best for:
Marketing, Desk Research, Mapping
Popularized by Jeff Patton in 2005, the user story mapping technique is an agile way to manage product backlogs. Whether you’re working alone or with a product team, you can leverage user story mapping to plan product releases. User story maps help teams stay focused on the business value and release features that customers care about. The framework helps to get a shared understanding for the cross-functional team of what needs to be done to satisfy customers' needs.
4 L's Retrospective Template
Works best for:
Retrospectives, Decision Making
So you just completed a sprint. Teams busted their humps and emotions ran high. Now take a clear-eyed look back and grade the sprint honestly—what worked, what didn’t, and what can be improved. This approach (4Ls stand for liked, learned, lacked, and longed for) is an invaluable way to remove the emotion and look at the process critically. That’s how you can build trust, improve morale, and increase engagement—as well as make adjustments to be more productive and successful in the future.