The Start, Stop, Continue retrospective
Three questions about how your team works: what to start doing, what to stop, and what to keep. How to run it so the cards turn into change.
Start, Stop, Continue asks three questions about how your team works: what should we start doing, what should we stop, and what should we keep? It's simple enough for a team's first retro, and every card is already phrased as something to do.
Its focus is behavior: habits, practices and ways of working. That's its strength and its limit. It doesn't ask what happened or how people felt, so a hard sprint can pass without anyone saying so.
The three columns
- Start: What new behaviors should we adopt? Concrete enough to try next sprint: "Pair on every database migration," not "Communicate better."
- Stop: What should we cease doing? Name a practice, not a person: "Stop merging on Friday afternoons." It's the hardest column to write in, so give it time.
- Continue: What's working that we should keep? Say why it works: "Keep the sprint demo. It caught two misunderstandings this time." Knowing why helps you protect it when things get busy.
When to use it
It suits regular sprint retros, new teams, teams new to retros, and short meetings. It also works after a process change, to decide which new habits to keep.
If your team writes the same cards every time, change the angle: Keep · Add · Less · More and Starfish let people say "less of this" instead of an all-or-nothing "stop." If morale is low after a rough sprint, Mad · Sad · Glad makes room to talk about that first.
How to run it
- Set the stage (5 minutes). Name the period you're looking at and review last time's action items. Did last time's "start" cards actually start?
- Write alone (7 minutes). Everyone writes in all three columns, with at least one card in Continue.
- Group (5 to 10 minutes). Merge duplicates. If the same practice is in one person's Start and another's Stop, put the cards side by side: that disagreement is worth discussing.
- Vote (3 minutes). Everyone spends their votes on what matters most to them. Hidden tallies stop people piling onto the early leader.
- Discuss (20 minutes). Take the topics in order of votes. For a Stop card, ask what the practice was meant to achieve, and whether something else needs to do that job.
- Agree actions (5 to 10 minutes). Two or three changes, each with an owner and a due date. A Start without an owner rarely starts.
- Close (3 minutes). Read the actions back, and name one Continue card worth celebrating.
Tips
- Read Continue first. Starting with what works sets a steadier tone for Stop.
- Limit the starts. Every new habit costs attention. If you start two things, consider stopping one.
- Rotate formats now and then. After many sprints of the same questions, answers become automatic. A different format for one sprint can surface something new.
Run it in Scrums
Choose New session → Retrospective on your team's page and pick Start · Stop · Continue from the formats. Everyone writes privately, and other people's cards stay face-down until the facilitator reveals them, so nobody's first card sets the tone. Then group similar cards (or let Auto-group cluster them), vote with hidden tallies, and discuss the topics in order, adding action items with an owner and a due date. Open action items come back in the next retro's Review step. Retros are anonymous by default, and Scrums is free.
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Questions
What's the difference between Start Stop Continue and Keep Add Less More?
Start Stop Continue is all-or-nothing: start a practice, stop it, or keep it. Keep Add Less More adds degrees, so you can say "less of this" without ending it. Use the first when the team needs clear decisions, and the second when the process mostly works and needs tuning.
Is Start Stop Continue good for a first retro?
Yes. The questions need no explanation, the cards are already actions, and it fits comfortably in 45 minutes.
What if nobody writes anything in Stop?
People may not feel safe criticizing a practice, or may not want to seem to criticize a colleague. Anonymous cards help, and so does a softer question: "What did we do this sprint that didn't seem worth the time?" Psychological safety is built in moments like this.