Plus / Delta

When to use

Closing five minutes of a workshop, planning session, off-site, or any one-off meeting. Skip it if the meeting was fine and short — Plus/Delta on a 30-minute stand-up is overhead. Skip it if the meeting was bad — Plus/Delta won't fix it, and trying to extract a Delta will just stretch the pain. Don't use it as the team's sprint retro; it's too thin a format to carry that weight.

How it runs

1. Two columns, named

   Plus on the left, Delta on the right. Tell people Delta means 'change next time,' not 'complain about today' — the framing matters.

2. Round-robin, one of each

   Each person says one Plus and one Delta out loud. No silent write — at five minutes, the saving-out-loud is the point. If a person passes, that's fine; don't force it.

3. Capture the Deltas

   Write the Deltas down somewhere the next meeting's facilitator can see them. Don't write the Pluses down — the Pluses are for the room, the Deltas are for next time.

4. Close the call

   Don't open the Deltas into a discussion. The closer is over the moment the last person speaks. If something needs more, schedule it; don't extend the closer.

Why it works

The format's strength is its cost. Five minutes, one Plus and one Delta each, said aloud, done. People say things in a closer they wouldn't put in a survey because the cost of speaking is low. Trying to make it bigger than that breaks it — Plus/Delta as a 45-minute retro is a category error.

Variations

• Async Plus/Delta — a Slack thread after the meeting. Lower social cost, lower signal. Useful for very large groups (20+).
• Plus/Delta/Question — third column for things people didn't get to ask. Helpful for workshops where decisions were made fast.
• Single-Delta version — drop the Plus column entirely. Use it when you only have three minutes and you want to focus on the change.

Facilitator notes

Don't editorialise the Deltas as people say them. Someone says 'we ran ten minutes over' and the temptation is to defend the agenda; resist it. Just write it down. The senior person says theirs last so the Deltas don't anchor on whatever they would have changed.

Pitfalls

• Bloating it into a project retrospective. Plus/Delta is a meeting closer; if you need a sprint retro, run SSC or 4Ls instead.
• Letting the Deltas turn into discussion. Capture, don't process — the closer is over when the round ends.
• Skipping it because the meeting was fine. If the meeting was fine, you don't need a Plus/Delta. The format isn't mandatory.
• Capturing the Deltas in a doc nobody reads. The next meeting's facilitator should see them; otherwise the data dies.

Remote tips

Round-robin works fine on video — call the next person by name to keep cadence. For groups over twelve, switch to a parallel chat dump: everyone posts their Plus and Delta in chat at the same time, fifteen seconds, done. Reading them aloud one at a time at that scale is too slow.

Example outputs

• Plus: 'The pre-read meant we skipped the usual ten minutes of recap.'
• Delta: 'We ran ten minutes over because we didn't agree on the goal up front.'
• Plus: 'Camera-on rule made this feel like a meeting, not a status call.'
• Delta: 'The decision in the last fifteen minutes wasn't documented. Whose action is it?'

FAQ

Plus/Delta or Start/Stop/Continue?

Plus/Delta is a five-minute closer for a one-hour meeting. SSC is a thirty-minute retro for a sprint of work. Different scales. If you're using Plus/Delta as your sprint retro, switch to SSC and stop.

Should I run it after every meeting?

No. Run it after meetings where the format itself is new or where the next meeting's facilitator might benefit from the Deltas. After a routine stand-up, it's overhead.

What if there are no Deltas?

Two possibilities: the meeting was actually fine (allowed; close the call) or people are reading the room and won't say. If you suspect the second, switch to an anonymous Plus/Delta in a chat dump and see what changes.

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