The start, stop, continue retrospective
A start, stop, continue retrospective is a team review with three columns that already read as decisions. Start holds what the team should begin doing. Stop holds what it should give up. Continue holds what is working and needs protecting. It is the fastest of the common formats, because a card in any column is most of the way to an action item.
The three columns
The board opens with Start, Stop, and Continue already in place. The cards come from one ordinary sprint. Each names a behaviour the team controls and the effect it had, which makes the vote a choice between outcomes rather than between opinions.
Start
What should we begin doing? A new habit the team can adopt on Monday without asking anyone for permission.
Write the rollback step in the pull request description.
Stop
What should we give up? Something the team is doing now that costs more than it returns.
Stop carrying the same three tickets into the next sprint. Close them or drop them.
Continue
What is working and needs protecting? The column teams leave empty, and the one that saves a practice from being cut.
Keep the 15-minute triage at 10:00. It took bug age from 9 days to 3.
This is not the performance-review version
The same three words are used for feedback to one person: tell a colleague what to start, stop, and continue. That is a different exercise, and running it on a shared retro board goes wrong fast.
The retrospective
- The subject is how the team works.
- Cards hide their author, so rank does not weight a card.
- The team votes, and the vote decides what gets discussed.
- The output is a short list of action items with owners.
The feedback exercise
- The subject is one named person.
- Attribution is the point. Anonymous personal feedback lands badly.
- There is no vote. Feedback is not a majority decision.
- The output is a private conversation, not a public board.
Looptro builds the first one. If a card names a person, move it off the board and into a conversation with that person.
How to run a start, stop, continue retro board
Five steps across the four phases of the board, in 45 minutes for a team of 3 to 12 people. Every step has a limit, and the limits are the format: take them off and this becomes an hour of discussion with no decisions at the end.
- Open the board and share the link. Click "Start a retro", pick Start, Stop, Continue, and type a display name. Copy the share link and send it to the team. A guest opens it, types a display name, and joins. One retro holds up to 200 people.
- Reflect: 5 minutes, one idea per card. Give the team 5 minutes and hold the line at 5. A longer writing phase produces longer cards, not better ones. Post bodies stay blurred while everyone writes.
- Group: merge and read the counts. Unblur the board and drag cards that say the same thing onto each other. Read Continue first: it is the shortest column and the team will skip it if you leave it until last.
- Vote: 3 votes each, one pass. Set a limit of 3 votes per person in the retro settings and vote in one pass with no discussion. The board shows the vote count on a card and never shows who voted.
- Discuss: stop at three cards. Take the top three cards in vote order and stop there, even if the fourth looks interesting. Agree one action item for each, with an owner and a date, and write it on the board before the team leaves.
Keep, drop, add, and the reordered form
Keep, drop, add is the same board with the columns renamed. Keep matches Continue, Drop matches Stop, Add matches Start. Teams pick the shorter words to make the cards feel less like commitments, which is worth knowing if your Start column has gone quiet.
Some facilitators reorder the board to Continue, Stop, Start, so the retro opens on what is working. That helps a team which has started treating the retro as a complaints queue. Looptro ships Start, Stop, Continue, and an anonymous retro cannot rename or reorder a column, so get the same effect by reading Continue first. The run-through above does exactly that.
When to reach for start, stop, continue
Make it the default. It suits a routine sprint, a team new to retros, and any session with a hard stop, because it produces decisions in the time another format takes to finish grouping. It is also the one to run when the team is tired of retros: three columns and 45 minutes asks very little. Switch when the answers stop changing. If the same three cards come back sprint after sprint, the format has run out of things to find.
The other three formats
- Mad, Sad, Glad
- Asks how the sprint felt before it asks what to do. Use it after a rough sprint, when the mood is the thing nobody has said out loud.
- 4Ls (Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed for)
- A slower, four-way look back that keeps what the team learned. Use it at a milestone, a launch, or the end of a project.
- Sailboat (Wind, Anchors, Rocks, Island)
- A picture instead of a list. Use it when the team needs to talk about risk and about the goal, not only about the last two weeks.
All four run with no account. The no-login page states what an anonymous retro gives you and what it costs you.
Questions about the start, stop, continue retrospective
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What is a start stop continue retrospective?
- A start, stop, continue retrospective is a team review with three columns that already read as decisions. Start holds what the team should begin doing. Stop holds what it should give up. Continue holds what is working and needs protecting. The format is fast because a card in any column is close to an action item, so the team spends its time choosing rather than translating.
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How do you run a start stop continue retro board?
- Open a start, stop, continue board and share the link. Give the team 5 minutes to write, one idea per card. Group the duplicates. Give each person 3 votes and count them. Discuss the top cards and turn each one into an action item with an owner and a date. Budget 45 minutes for a team of 3 to 12 people. The format is the fastest of the four.
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What are start stop continue examples for a sprint?
- Start: "write the rollback step in the pull request description". Stop: "stop carrying the same three tickets into the next sprint, and either close them or drop them". Continue: "keep the 15-minute triage at 10:00, which took bug age from 9 days to 3". Each card is a behaviour the team controls, and each one names the effect, so the vote is a choice between outcomes rather than opinions.
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Is start stop continue a performance review template?
- The same three words are used for feedback to one person, and that is a different exercise. A performance review is about an individual, it is not anonymous, and it is not a group vote. A start, stop, continue retrospective is about how a team works, the board hides who wrote each card, and the team votes on what to change. Looptro builds the retro. Do not run one-to-one feedback on a shared board.
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Is start stop continue the same as keep drop add?
- It is the same shape with the columns renamed. Keep matches Continue, Drop matches Stop, and Add matches Start. Some teams also reorder the columns to Continue, Stop, Start, so the retro opens on what is working. Looptro ships Start, Stop, Continue. If your team says keep, drop, add, the columns still hold the same three answers.
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When should I use a different format?
- Switch when the answers stop changing. If the same three cards come back every sprint, the format is no longer finding anything. Use Mad, Sad, Glad when the mood is the unsaid thing, Sailboat when the risk ahead matters more than the last two weeks, and 4Ls at a milestone, where what the team learned is worth keeping.
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Do I need an account to run a start stop continue retrospective?
- No. Click "Start a retro" on this page, pick Start, Stop, Continue, type a display name, and share the link. Guests join with a display name only, up to 200 people in one retro. Looptro deletes the retro 24 hours after you create it, so run it on the day and copy the summary before the window ends.
Start a start, stop, continue retro
The board opens with Start, Stop, and Continue in place. Share one link and the team joins as guests, with no account and no email address. Looptro deletes the retro 24 hours after you create it.