Hot Air Balloon
Sailboat looks back at the sprint you just ran. The balloon's storm-and-sky half makes the team talk about the one you haven't.
Four elements — Hot Air (what's lifting us), Sandbags (what's dragging us down), Storm Clouds (risks ahead), Sunny Skies (where we want to land). The first half is Sailboat by another name. The second half is the point: half the board is reserved for the next phase before the meeting starts, so the forward conversation can't get skipped.
When to use
Phase boundaries: a new quarter, a project moving from build to launch, the retro after a reorg settles. The forward half needs a real horizon to aim at — give it one and the format earns its hour. Skip it for routine sprint cadence: on a two-week loop the storm clouds repeat themselves and the team learns to write weather instead of risks. If you only want the look-back, that's Sailboat — run Sailboat.
How it runs
Draw the balloon and name the destination
Balloon in the middle, flames lifting it, sandbags hanging off the basket, storm clouds ahead, clear sky beyond them. Then say the horizon out loud — 'Q3', 'the beta launch' — and write it on the board. A forward half without a named destination produces generic weather. Five minutes, then cards.
Look back first: Hot Air and Sandbags
Ten minutes of silent writing on the phase just ended. Hot Air is what gave the team altitude; Sandbags is what dragged. Past tense only — this half is a normal retro and runs like one.
Switch tense: Storm Clouds and Sunny Skies
Announce the switch — 'we're done with last quarter, everything from here is about the next one.' Storm Clouds are specific risks on the route to the destination you named; Sunny Skies is what landing there looks like. Ten more minutes. Keep the halves separate or the look-back eats the meeting.
Discuss in order, budget for the storm
Hot Air quickly, Sandbags properly, then spend the second half of the discussion on Storm Clouds. The forward half is why you drew a balloon instead of a boat — if it gets ten minutes at the end, you ran Sailboat with extra steps.
Close with two lists, not one
Vote on Sandbags and pick one or two as commitments with owners and deadlines — standard retro output. Then walk the Storm Clouds: each one gets an owner and a first check-in date, or an explicit 'we accept this risk' said out loud. An unowned risk list is scenery.
Why it works
Ask 'any risks for next quarter?' as the last agenda item of a normal retro and you get shrugs — the room's energy is spent and the question is answerable with silence. The balloon makes the forward conversation structural instead of optional: an empty quadrant on the wall demands cards in a way an agenda item never does. And it inherits Sailboat's core trick — the metaphor depersonalises. 'The release process is a sandbag' is easier to say than 'the release manager is slowing us down', and 'storm cloud: the vendor migration' is easier than 'I think this plan is in trouble.'
Variations
- Drop the forward half and you've drawn Sailboat with different weather. Don't — run Sailboat.
- Forward half only (Storm Clouds and Sunny Skies) as a 30-minute kickoff exercise — a lightweight pre-mortem when the full format isn't warranted.
- Ask which single sandbag, if cut, buys the most altitude. Forces a ranking instead of a list.
- Write Sunny Skies as a postcard from the destination — one sentence, past tense, describing the landing. A pocket-sized Remember the Future.
Facilitator notes
Two failure modes. The one inherited from Sailboat: the metaphor becomes the meeting, and people debate whether something is a sandbag or a storm cloud. Settle it by tense — dragging us now is a sandbag, might hit us later is a storm cloud — and move on. The one specific to the balloon: storm clouds full of weather ('scope creep', 'unclear requirements') that could be written any quarter by any team. Push every cloud toward a name and a date. And as with Sailboat, the senior person writes last and reads last on Sandbags — their cards set the room's ceiling.
Pitfalls
- Running it every sprint. It's a phase-boundary format; on a fortnightly cadence the forward half repeats itself into filler.
- Letting the look-back half eat the clock. You drew a balloon for the storm-and-sky half — protect its time or run Sailboat.
- Storm clouds without owners. A risk list nobody owns is scenery; every cloud gets a name or an explicit acceptance.
- Sunny Skies as a gratitude column. It's a destination, not a vibe — cards should describe where the team lands, concretely enough to check later.
- Sandbags that name a person. Take it offline; the retro is for systems.
Remote tips
Same four-quadrant zoom problem as Sailboat — pre-build the template large and zoom one quadrant at a time. Open the board 24 hours early, but only the look-back half; hold Storm Clouds and Sunny Skies for the live session so the forward half reacts to the named destination rather than free-associating. Risks benefit from the room's pushback in a way sandbags don't.
Example outputs
- Hot air: the new release train. Two on-time releases in a row after a year of slipping.
- Sandbag: the flaky end-to-end suite — 40-minute runs and one in three needs a retry before anyone trusts it.
- Storm cloud: the payments vendor migration lands mid-quarter and nobody has scoped the cutover.
- Sunny sky: importer bug reports under five a week by end of Q3, and we're no longer the team people route around.
FAQ
- Hot Air Balloon, Sailboat, or Speedboat?
- Pick by how much of the meeting the future deserves. Speedboat is anchors-only — pure look-back, one column. Sailboat is the balanced review of a sprint or project just finished; its Rocks quadrant nods at the future but the meeting is rear-view. The balloon gives the future half the board. Reviewing what happened: Sailboat. Standing at a phase boundary where the next quarter needs real airtime: the balloon. If you keep cutting the storm-and-sky half for time, you wanted Sailboat all along.
- Can I run it as a regular sprint retro?
- You can; you'll regret it by the third one. A two-week horizon doesn't generate fresh storm clouds, so the forward half fills with the same three risks re-worded, and the team learns the quadrant is decorative. Keep SSC or Sailboat for cadence and save the balloon for boundaries — new quarter, new project stage, post-reorg.
- Is Storm Clouds just a pre-mortem?
- It's a pre-mortem lite — a ten-minute risk survey inside a broader retro. If the next phase is genuinely high-stakes, run the real thing: a full pre-mortem assumes the failure already happened and works backwards, which digs deeper than any quadrant will. The balloon tells you whether that deeper meeting is needed; a storm cloud everyone flinches at is your booking signal.