Starfish or The Wheel

The Starfish Method for Sprint Retrospectives is an easy way to achieve focus, give a voice to every member, and foster the thinking around practices and the value the team gets from them. It helps teams reflect on varying degrees of actions and activities rather than simply the traditional what went well or what did not go well. The Starfish exercise is an evolution of the typical 5 questions that are used for the retrospectives:

What you should Keep Doing?
What you should Do More Of?
What you should Start Doing?
What you should Do Less Of?
What you should Stop Doing?

The starfish divides the board into 5 areas:

Keep – The first area in the Starfish retrospective is “Keep Doing.” In this phase, the team reflects on what worked well during the sprint or project and identifies the things they want to continue doing. Usually, these are good activities or practices the team is doing well and they recognize the value of it. For example,
- Daily stand-up taking place at a good time for every member, Continuous testing, and Code reviews.
- If the team had a successful collaboration process, they might want to keep doing that in future sprints.
More – The second area is “More of.” In this phase, the team reflects on what worked well but what they feel could be done more often or with greater intensity. Any aspect or process which is useful but not fully taken advantage of. By spending more effort on these activities, quality will be improved. For example,
- If the team found that a certain technique or practice was helpful, they may want to incorporate it more frequently in future sprints.
- The team realizes how pair programming is good, yet they do not do it each time they should.
Start – The third area is “Start Doing.” In this phase, the team identifies new practices or techniques that they believe could help improve their process. Activities or ideas that a team wants to bring to the table. These are the new processes or activities that will improve the quality or speed of delivery. For example,
- If the team struggled with communication during the sprint, they may want to start holding daily stand-up meetings to keep everyone informed.
- Having team members pair up for peer-programming activities. Introducing Continuous Integration etc.
Less – The fourth area is “Less of.” In this phase, the team reflects on what didn’t work well or was not useful during the sprint. They then identify areas where they want to do less or eliminate entirely. Useful processes to the team and to the delivery, but taking more time or effort than really needed. For example,
- If a certain process was time-consuming and not productive, the team may want to do less of it in future sprints.
- Less email communication. Less involvement in technical forums outside the scope of the current delivery.
Stop – The third area is “Start Doing.” In this phase, the team identifies new practices or techniques that they believe could help improve their process. These are the activities that do not bring value to a team or to the customer. Activities that are a hindrance to progressing. For example,
- If the team struggled with communication during the sprint, they may want to start holding daily stand-up meetings to keep everyone informed.
- Asking all team members to write detailed emails after daily scrum when a 2-minute conversation during the meeting or offline is sufficient.

An interesting way to do this is to start with the negative aspects, and progressively cover the positives, as it fosters problem-solving and positive thinking – in the following order: Stop Doing, Do Less Of, Keep Doing, Do More Of, Start Doing. Starting with negative topics and moving toward the positive ones will help the team to end a retrospective with a positive feeling!

Different steps of Starfish Sprint Retrospective

Step 1: The Scrum Master draws a large circle on a whiteboard or paper on the wall and divides it into five equal segments and writes a title in each segment: more, less, start, stop, and keep.

Step 2: For each segment help team with questions like

What can we start doing that will speed up the team’s progress? (Start)
What can we stop doing that hinders the team’s progress? (Stop)
What can we keep doing to do that is currently helping the team’s progress? (Keep)
What is currently aiding the team’s progress and what we can do more of? (More)
What is currently impeding the team’s progress and we can do less of it? (Less)

Step 3: Encourage the team to place stickers with ideas in each segment until everyone has posted all of their ideas.

Step 4: Do a brainstorming session with your team. Ask them to collect several ideas in the section “Stop”. Afterward, give 2-3 minutes to each person to read out loud his ideas. After, take 10 minutes to discuss if everyone is aligned. Repeat the exercise for each of the different sections: “Less”, “Keep” and “More”. Note that the same idea may have been expressed in opposite segments but these should still be grouped together.

Step 5: Use Dot Voting to prioritize and most important sticky under each category.

Step 6: Discuss each grouping as a team including strategy and any corrective actions. This strategy might include responsible persons, the deadline, and most importantly, success criteria. In order to know if the implementation was successful, we must have success criteria outlined.

Benefits of Starfish Sprint Retrospective

The Starfish retrospective is a valuable tool for Agile teams, offering several benefits. Here are some of the key benefits of using the Starfish retrospective:

Encourages open communication: The Starfish retrospective provides a structured approach to reflection, which encourages team members to express their opinions and concerns openly. This can lead to better communication and more effective collaboration within the team.
Identifies areas for improvement: By exploring the areas of Keep Doing, More of, Start Doing, Less of, and Stop Doing, the Starfish retrospective helps identify areas for improvement. This can lead to more effective processes, better outcomes, and increased productivity in future sprints.
Builds on success: The Starfish retrospective helps the team identify what went well and build on those successes. This can lead to greater confidence in the team’s abilities and a sense of momentum as they move forward.
Fosters a culture of continuous improvement: The Starfish retrospective encourages the team to continually evaluate their work and identify areas for improvement. This helps create a culture of continuous improvement, where the team is always looking for ways to work more effectively.
Increases team motivation and engagement: By actively involving team members in the retrospective process and valuing their input, the Starfish retrospective can increase team motivation and engagement. This can lead to a more positive team culture and better outcomes overall.

Example of a Starfish retrospective

Let’s say a software development team recently completed a two-week sprint. They decide to use the Starfish retrospective to evaluate their progress and identify areas for improvement. Here’s how their retrospective might look:

Keep Doing: The team was happy with their use of a Kanban board to manage their tasks and wants to continue doing that in future sprints. They also found that regular code reviews were helpful and want to keep doing those.
More of: The team found that pair programming was effective, but they only did it a few times during the sprint. They want to incorporate more pair programming in future sprints to help improve code quality and knowledge sharing.
Start Doing: The team noticed that they had some communication breakdowns during the sprint, particularly when working on complex tasks. They want to start doing daily stand-up meetings to ensure everyone is informed and on the same page.
Less of: The team found that their lengthy retrospectives took up too much time and didn’t always lead to actionable insights. They want to do fewer retrospective meetings and focus on making them more concise and productive.
Stop Doing: The team identified that they spent too much time trying to optimize small details that didn’t have a significant impact on the overall project. They want to stop worrying about minor details and focus on the bigger picture.