What is the Start, Stop, Continue template?
Run a productive online retrospective session and look for specific actions your team would like to begin, quit, or continue doing every day. Agree on the steps that make you more effective and successful, and set actionable items at the end of your retro event. Reflect on your team’s last sprint and experiences using the start, stop, continue template.
Brainstorm and populate the three columns with notes that contain activities that worked well (or didn’t) for your team. Discuss specific examples and group them into themes if needed. Vote on critical areas to collaboratively decide whether they’re worth doing or not. Empower your employees and entire teams by letting them find out and create their own way of working.
What are the benefits of the Start, Stop, Continue template?
Thanks to the Start, Stop, Continue template, you can:
- Review all your teammates’ actions in the previous sprint and decide which ones you should stop or continue doing.
- Come up with new ways, activities, or processes that could potentially ease the flow of your everyday work and start practicing them on a daily basis.
- Agree on the most salient steps you should take to increase the productivity within your team and consider more projects a success.
- Get a detailed overview of how things went and where you can iterate to become more efficient.
- Clarify issues faster, reach consensus based on shared priorities, and weigh the impact of ideas.
How to use the Start, Stop, Continue template in a few steps?
- Invite your teammates to an audio and video brainstorming session on Whiteboards and insert the Start, Stop, Continue template on your empty board.
- Place activities on sticky notes together with your team.
- Let your attendees decide which column they will drag and drop their sticky notes with ideas: start, stop, or continue.
- Use the voting session to distinguish the most popular actions you want to start, stop, or continue doing in your upcoming sprint.
- Continue to work under the new rules with your team and make changes to the process whenever needed.
