---
title: "What is a retrospective? Sprint retros explained"
url: "https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/retrospective/"
description: "A retrospective is a team meeting about how the work went, ending in changes to try next time. How retros work, and how to run the input step in Slack."
---

# What is a retrospective?

**Retrospective**: A retrospective is a meeting at the end of a piece of work where the team looks at how it worked, not what it built, and picks changes to try next time. In Scrum it closes every sprint.

Also known as: retro, sprint retrospective.

The Scrum Guide puts the purpose plainly: to plan ways to increase quality and effectiveness.
The team looks at people, interactions, processes, tools and its Definition of Done, and
agrees what to change.

## Example polls

Paste any of these into the message box in Slack.

```text
/poll "Sprint 42 retro" "Anonymous. Two minutes." anonymous close after 2 days --- "What went well?" short text --- "What didn't?" short text --- "What should we try next sprint?" short text optional
```

Anonymous retro input, collected before the meeting. *Premium: surveys (several questions), closing automatically.*

```text
/poll "What should we try first?" "Shorter standups" "No-meeting Wednesdays" "Demo every Friday" ranked close after 1 day
```

The follow-up vote on the top suggestions. *Premium: closing automatically.*

```text
/poll "How did the sprint go?" "Rough" "Below par" "Fine" "Good" "Great" scale anonymous
```

A one-question sprint rating to track from retro to retro. *Free.*

## How a retro works

Most retros follow the same three steps:

1. **Gather input**: what went well, what didn't, what to change.
2. **Group and discuss**: cluster the input into themes and talk about the big ones.
3. **Pick actions**: one to three concrete changes, each with an owner, to try in the next
   sprint.

The Scrum Guide caps the retro at three hours for a one-month sprint, and shorter for
shorter sprints.

## Running the input step in Slack

Collecting input in the meeting means the loudest voices fill the board. Collecting it
beforehand, anonymously, gets everyone's view and saves meeting time.

With Simple Poll, post an anonymous survey (Premium) a day or two before the meeting with
`short text` questions, and `close after` so it's finished when you meet. In the meeting,
group the answers into themes, count them, and quote a few word for word. Then put the top
suggestions to a [ranked](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/ranked-choice-voting/) vote to pick the first action.
Teams that are fully async can run the whole retro this way.

## The mistake people make

Ending without an action, or with ten. Pick one to three changes, name an owner, and open
the next retro by checking whether they happened. If the same problem shows up three retros
running, the actions aren't working.

## FAQ

### Should retro input be anonymous?

Usually, yes. People name problems more readily without their name attached, especially
problems involving colleagues or managers.

### Is a retrospective the same as a post-mortem?

They're related. A retro is regular, at the end of every iteration. A post-mortem usually
follows one incident or project.

## Related

- [Sprint retrospective poll for Slack](https://simplepoll.rocks/templates/sprint-retrospective/): At the end of every sprint, before the retro meeting, so people can answer honestly and you walk in with the themes already on the table.
- [What is psychological safety?](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/psychological-safety/): Psychological safety is "a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking", as Amy Edmondson defined it in 1999. In practice: people can ask, disagree, admit mistakes and raise problems without fear of embarrassment or punishment.
- [What is an open-ended question?](https://simplepoll.rocks/glossary/open-ended-question/): An open-ended question lets people answer in their own words instead of choosing from a list. It surfaces things you didn't think to ask about, at the cost of answers you have to read and group yourself.
- [Slack polls for engineering teams](https://simplepoll.rocks/use-cases/engineering-teams/): Engineers will answer a poll if it takes ten seconds and replaces a meeting. They will ignore one that reads like an HR form. The polls that stick in engineering channels are short, tied to the sprint, and end in a decision someone acts on.

## Sources

- [The Scrum Guide](https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html)

---

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