Remote Teams
One big advantage and one big risk. Everyone has equal screen time. But silence is harder to read.
Why this matters
The biggest mistake remote retros make is running an in-person format on Zoom. The dynamics aren't the same. Eye contact is gone. Body language is gone. The hallway conversation that surfaced the real issue is gone. The format has to do more of the work — and most teams don't change the format, they just turn the camera on and hope.
Recommended activities
Start, Stop, Continue
Three simple buckets that surface what to begin, end, and keep doing.
Sailboat
A four-quadrant retro for naming structural friction without pointing at a person.
Two Truths and a Lie
A classic icebreaker that gets teams talking in five minutes.
Word Association
The lowest-friction warm-up there is — pick a meaty seed word and the room tells you its mood.
Personal Map
Your name in the centre, branches for the parts of life you choose to share. Connection, not disclosure.
Hopes and Fears
A pre-mortem that doesn't admit to being a pre-mortem. Run it before kickoff; come back at the halfway mark.
ESVP
A thermometer for the room. If half the team voted Prisoner, you're running the wrong meeting.
Plus / Delta
A five-minute closer for a one-hour meeting. Not a sprint retro.
The Prime Directive
Norman Kerth's frame for a blameless retro. Read it the first time. Skip it the tenth.
Dot Voting
Three dots, vote silently, the senior person votes last. Anything else is a popularity contest with a sticker budget.
Mad / Sad / Glad
Mad first or you wasted the meeting. Glad-first is hosting; Mad-first is working.
KALM (Keep / Add / Less / More)
SSC with the edge filed off. Run it when 'Stop' feels confrontational and 'Less' feels survivable.
DAKI (Drop / Add / Keep / Improve)
The four-column variant that splits Keep from Improve. Improve is where the work hides.
Lean Coffee
The retrospective for when you have more topics than time. The timer is the format.
Rose / Bud / Thorn
The format you run when 'Mad' is too sharp for the room. Engineering teams should pick something else.
Speedboat
Sailboat is Speedboat with a wind column. Run Sailboat unless you specifically want anchors-only.
Five Whys
A technique inside a retro, not a retrospective on its own. Twenty minutes on one specific incident.
Timeline Retrospective
End-of-quarter, end-of-project. The mood line is the format. Don't run it on a sprint.
What Went Well / What Didn't
Two columns is too few. If you want a retrospective, use Start/Stop/Continue. If you want a journal, use this.
Fishbone (Ishikawa) Diagram
Five Whys gives you a chain. Fishbone gives you a map. Software bugs almost always need the map.
One-Word Check-In
The cheapest diagnostic that exists. Treat the word as data, not warm-up.
Temperature Check
A barometer with a half-life. Anonymous extends the runway; rotating the question keeps it sharp.
Niko-Niko Calendar
A longitudinal mood format dressed as a daily ritual. One day's dot is nothing; six weeks of dots is the format.
Appreciations (Kudos)
Specific or skip. 'Thanks for being awesome' is worse than silence.
Roman Vote
A technique that lives inside Lean Coffee. Thumbs up extends; thumbs down moves on; sideways is the warning sign.
Fist of Five
A confidence check before commitment, not a vote. The signal is the low end.
Remember the Future
The press release dated six months out. Past tense or you're back to a wishlist.
Pre-Mortem
Anonymous or you wasted the meeting. The senior person's fears anchor the room.
Draw the Team
Works for design teams and offsites. Skip it for engineering on a Tuesday.
Strengths Spotting
'What's X really good at?' is the format. 'What's X's strength?' is a 360 review.
How to run it
Async-first brainstorm. Open the board 24 hours before the call so the slower thinkers can write at their own pace; live-only retros punish them. Pick a format with explicit silent-write phases — 4Ls, Sailboat. Skip the verbal round-robin; share screen with a board sorted by votes. Close with a written commitment in the same channel the team uses for daily work, so it doesn't die when the call ends.