Form
Retro entry with period, all five rays with stickies, top clusters, 3-5 experiments (with owner, date, success criterion, measure) and status overview of previous actions.
RunsheetAgile
Starfish Retrospective
ComplexityLow
Time45-90 min
Participants4-12
FormatWorkshop
MaturityEstablished
01
Preparation
What needs to be ready before start
Materials
Whiteboard or Miro with Starfish diagram (five rays: Keep Doing, Less Of, More Of, Start Doing, Stop Doing); stickies; timer; action tracker.
People / roles
One facilitator; 4-12 team members; scribe.
Pre-read
Time period clear; status of previous actions; note on differentiated format (more than binary Start/Stop); team maturity relevant (good for more mature teams that value nuance).
Time needed
45-90 min
Setup
Five rays visibly labeled. Pre-read with period highlights. Rule: silent work, at least 1 sticky per ray.
02
Core question
The one question this method answers
Which practices does the team keep exactly as they are, reduce, strengthen, start anew, and stop completely?
03
Flow
Marker: Phase
| Step | Duration | Action | Hint |
|---|---|---|---|
1Phase 1: Explain format | 5 min | Clearly distinguish five categories. Less Of is not Stop Doing; More Of is not Start Doing. Put examples on wall. | Most common confusion: Less Of vs Stop. Less Of = reduce existing practice, still present; Stop = remove completely. Examples help. |
2Phase 2: Silent work | 15-20 min | Stickies into all five rays. Concrete practices, no wishful thinking. | At least 1 sticky per ray per person. Someone leaving a ray empty did not understand it or intentionally skipped it; facilitator asks. |
3Phase 3: Present and cluster | 15-20 min | Present round-robin, cluster. When conflict between rays appears (for example sticky in Less Of and More Of), discuss and classify. | Conflicts are valuable: they show different perception. Do not resolve prematurely, discuss openly. |
4Phase 4: Prioritize | 10-15 min | Dot-voting (3 dots per person). Top cluster per ray. Reflect: what does distribution say about team picture? | Distribution itself is signal: many Start Doing means innovation pressure, many Stop Doing means overload. |
5Phase 5: Experiments | 15-30 min | Formulate one concrete experiment per top cluster: what to do, who owns it, by when, how success is recognized. | For Less Of/More Of: give a measure (for example "Daily to 12 min instead of 20"). For Start/Stop: clear behavior change. |
04
Artifact
What comes out at the end
Versioning / ownership
One entry per retro in series. Track measures for Less Of/More Of across follow-up retros to see whether they actually shifted.
Tool alternatives
- Miro or FigJam with Starfish template
- Retrium, TeamRetro
- Notion page with five sections
- Whiteboard photo plus Markdown notes
starfish-retrospective-working-template.md
Compact working template for the Starfish retrospective with keep, more, less, stop, and start prompts.
Starfish Retrospective Working Template
Goal
Turn team reflection into concrete practice changes and experiments.
Context
Which time frame or event should the team review?
Input
- Time frame:
- Team or group:
- Notes, signals, or examples:
Working area
- Keep doing:
- More of:
- Less of:
- Stop doing:
- Start doing:
- Experiment ideas:
Output artifacts
- Starfish board:
- Practice changes:
- Experiments:
Open questions
- ...
Decision / next step
Owner, date, and success signal.
05
Example output
Concrete filled scenario, fictional example
starfish-retrospective-beispiel.md
Concrete filled scenario, fictional example
Starfish — Team Platform, Quarterly Retro (2026-05-15, 80 min, 8 people)
Keep Doing
- ADRs per architecture decision (5 stickies).
- Weekly office hours for other teams (4 stickies).
Less Of
- Sync meetings under 5 people (3 stickies, measure: today 5/week, target 2/week).
- PR reviews same day (3 stickies, measure: today 80%, target 50%, rest next day with clear expectation).
- Long Slack threads without conclusion (2 stickies).
More Of
- Hands-on workshops for product teams (4 stickies, measure: today 1/month, target 2/month).
- Live pairing via Zoom (3 stickies).
Start Doing
- Quarterly "Golden Path Review" with all teams (3 stickies).
- Issue templates for platform requests (2 stickies).
Stop Doing
- Tech talks without clear topic (3 stickies).
- 30-min standup slot (2 stickies, Daily returns to 15).
Experiments:
- Cap standup at 15 min, Walking the Board (Owner: @anna, from 2026-05-19, success: median <16 min).
- PR review norm: 50% same-day, 50% next day (Owner: @ben, by 2026-05-30, measure in Sprint Review).
- Golden Path Review pilot Q3 (Owner: @lisa, date 2026-07-15).
- Issue template GitHub (Owner: @marcus, by 2026-05-22).
06
Pitfalls
Recognize symptoms and steer against them
Trap
Less Of and Stop Doing confused
Symptom
Items land in wrong category, discussion drifts.
What to do
Examples on wall. Less Of = reduce, still present; Stop = fully gone. Facilitator corrects immediately.
Trap
No measure for Less Of/More Of
Symptom
"Fewer meetings" without number, after 2 weeks nobody knows if it worked.
What to do
Concrete measure per Less Of/More Of: baseline and target. Without measure, change cannot be seen.
Trap
Keep Doing empty
Symptom
Team focuses on improvement and forgets preservation.
What to do
Force at least 2 Keep Doing stickies per person. What is worth preserving must be named or it gets lost.
Trap
Action inflation
Symptom
One experiment per ray, 10+ experiments overall, nobody implements.
What to do
Maximum 5 experiments per retro. Better 3 with real measure than 8 without.
Trap
Static rerun
Symptom
Every retro same topics in same rays, no movement.
What to do
Semiannual pattern analysis. Recurring topics without movement are structural issues not solvable at team level; escalate upward.
07
Stop criteria
Done signals checkable in under a minute
Team newly assembled, lacking shared experience basis for nuance.
Safety missing, five categories become filtering instead of differentiation.
Time period too short (<1 sprint), no assessable practices.
Actions from previous retros not implemented, format loses effect.
Team needs simpler format for orientation (Start-Stop-Continue), Starfish overwhelms.
Team larger than 12, clusters become hard to manage.
Finished the runsheet?
Go to the profile for purpose, similar methods, and sources or continue to the next method in the catalog.