Retro action items that actually get done
2026-10-15 · The Scrums team
The most common complaint about retros isn't the meeting. It's that nothing changes afterwards. Five habits that close the loop.
Ask people why they've stopped taking retros seriously and you'll often hear the same answer: "We talk about the same problems every time, and nothing changes."
Esther Derby and Diana Larsen's Agile Retrospectives, published in 2006, describes five stages of a good retro: set the stage, gather data, generate insights, decide what to do, and close. Most teams are good at the middle three. The fourth, deciding what to do, is where retros succeed or fail. Here are five habits that make it work.
1. Fewer actions
A retro that ends with twelve action items has made no decisions. Pick the one to three things that matter most and let the rest go. Dot voting helps: the team's top topics get the actions.
2. One owner, one date
"We should improve our test coverage" isn't an action. "Sam adds tests for the checkout flow by Friday" is. Every action item in Scrums has an owner, a due date and a status, editable right where it was written.
3. Keep the why
An action item without its context is hard to prioritize a week later. In Scrums, action items live in the same thread as the discussion that produced them, and the summary groups them under the topic they came from.
4. Make them visible between retros
Action items forgotten in a document are action items not done. My action items in Scrums shows everyone what's theirs across every team, and an email reminder arrives when one is nearly due or overdue. People who use a calendar app can subscribe to theirs, with due dates included.
5. Start the next retro with them
Before anyone writes a new card, look at what happened to the last ones. Scrums puts open action items from earlier retros in the next retro's Review step, so the team updates them first.
Each action item has an owner, a due date and a status.
Teams that see their retros change things keep coming to them with real problems. That's the loop worth closing. Try a retro in your browser, or sign up free.
More on running retrospectives in Scrums.