Session Flow · 30-minute sprint retro to 2-hour project retrospective

Derby & Larsen's Five Stages of a Retrospective

A five-stage arc for team retrospectives from Esther Derby and Diana Larsen's book Agile Retrospectives. It works as a container: any retro activity, such as a timeline or a sailboat, slots into one of the stages, so the meeting moves from data to insight to commitment instead of stopping at venting.

When to use Derby & Larsen's Five Stages of a Retrospective

Sprint, project or quarterly retrospectives; any team review that should end in agreed improvements, not just a discussion.

How Derby & Larsen's Five Stages of a Retrospective works

Use the five stages as the block structure of a sprint or project retrospective and fill each with one activity sized to the time available. The stages can also order a team review or lessons-learned meeting outside agile work.

Phases of Derby & Larsen's Five Stages of a Retrospective

  1. Set the Stage: Restate the goal of the retrospective and get every voice into the room early, for example with a one-word check-in. Agree on how the group will talk without blame.
  2. Gather Data: Build a shared picture of what happened in the period under review: events, facts, metrics and how people felt about them.
  3. Generate Insights: Look for patterns and root causes behind the data. The group asks why things happened before jumping to fixes.
  4. Decide What to Do: Choose one to three improvement actions the team will actually take, with an owner for each.
  5. Close the Retrospective: Summarise the decisions, thank people, and do a short check on how the retrospective itself went.

Key principles

  • Every voice heard early
  • Data before interpretation
  • Insight before action
  • Few actions, clearly owned
  • Close by improving the retro itself

Best for

  • Sprint retrospectives
  • Project lessons learned
  • Team health reviews
  • Continuous improvement cycles

Considerations

  • Teams often skip Generate Insights and jump to actions; protect that stage
  • In longer retros the stages may loop per topic rather than run once
  • Rotate activities so the format does not go stale
  • Needs psychological safety; a manager in the room can mute the data stage

Attribution & sources

Developed by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen, 2006 (Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great)

Primary source

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