Start Doing
Introduce a promising practice the team is not using today.
- Pair on complex stories.
- Schedule earlier stakeholder reviews.
- Improve refinement before sprint planning.
Starfish Retrospective
Use five balanced prompts to decide what your team should start, stop, continue, reduce, and strengthen.
What Is a Starfish Retrospective?
The Starfish Retrospective is a five-category Sprint Retrospective technique. Its prompts—Start Doing, Stop Doing, Continue Doing, Less Of, and More Of—help teams discuss change with more nuance than a simple keep-or-remove decision.
Teams use Starfish when familiar practices are not entirely good or bad. A useful activity may need less time; a successful habit may deserve more emphasis. That middle ground supports balanced continuous improvement and is especially effective for experienced teams ready to fine-tune how they work.
The Five Starfish Categories
Stop Doing
Remove a habit that creates more cost than value.
- Accepting vague requirements.
- Delaying code reviews until the end of the sprint.
- Carrying unnecessary work between sprints.
Continue Doing
Protect effective practices that consistently help the team.
- Focused Daily Scrum participation.
- Automated testing on every change.
- Frequent, transparent communication.
Less Of
Reduce an activity that has some value but currently consumes too much time or attention.
- Context switching between unrelated priorities.
- Manual deployment steps.
- Large pull requests that are difficult to review.
More Of
Increase a useful practice that is already producing positive results.
- Customer collaboration and early feedback.
- Knowledge sharing, documentation, and test automation.
- Recognition and team celebrations.
Use What Went Well examples to make Continue and More Of responses specific, and What Didn't Go Well examples to describe Stop and Less Of ideas without blame.
How to Facilitate a Starfish Retrospective
- Prepare the exercise. Create five clearly labeled areas and review previous commitments before the meeting.
- Explain every category. Clarify the difference between stopping something and doing less of it, or continuing something and doing more.
- Invite balanced participation. Give everyone quiet writing time before discussion so each perspective is represented.
- Group similar ideas. Combine related cards and ask neutral clarifying questions.
- Prioritize improvements. Vote or discuss across all five categories instead of focusing only on problems.
- Create action items. Select a few realistic changes, assign owners, and decide how progress will be reviewed.
The Sprint Retrospective best practices guide offers more advice on psychological safety and follow-through. Browse broader retrospective examples for help writing actionable cards.
Discussion Tips
- Encourage feedback across all five categories for a balanced view.
- Discuss systems, behaviors, and processes rather than assigning blame.
- Turn broad observations into specific, testable improvements.
- Select only a few changes the team can realistically pursue next sprint.
- Review previous retrospective commitments before adding new ones.
Start with a retrospective icebreaker when the group needs help warming up. For distributed teams, apply the participation guidance from remote Sprint Retrospectives.
Starfish Compared with Other Formats
The Start, Stop, Continue retrospective is faster and easier for teams new to structured reflection. Starfish adds Less Of and More Of when the team needs finer adjustments. Choose Mad, Sad, Glad when emotional impact is central, or the Sailboat Retrospective when goals, momentum, obstacles, and future risks should be explored together.
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