A Start Stop Continue retrospective helps a team decide which practices to introduce, which to stop, and which to preserve. The three prompts turn a broad request for feedback into a discussion about specific actions.
You can use the format after a project or sprint, during a team review, or for personal reflection. Below are the basic prompts, guidance on when to use them, and four examples you can adapt on a Boardmix canvas.
What is the Start Stop Continue technique?
The technique divides feedback into three sections:
- Start: New actions or practices that could address an observed need.
- Stop: Existing behaviors or processes that get in the way or no longer serve a useful purpose.
- Continue: Practices that work well and should be maintained.
This structure keeps the conversation focused on how work happens. “Stop” is about a practice, not a person to blame. “Continue” should name something worth protecting, rather than simply say that the team is doing well.
A suggestion is not yet a decision. For example, “Stop the weekly meeting” may reveal an overloaded calendar, but the meeting may serve a purpose that needs another home. Discuss that purpose before removing it.
Who can use Start Stop Continue?
Project teams
Project teams can use this technique at the end of a sprint or project phase to review how they worked together. Keep the scope narrow, such as the launch handoff or the review process. A shared Boardmix board gives participants one place to add and organize their observations.
Teachers and students
Teachers and students can reflect on classroom activities, teaching methods, and learning experiences. Ask about concrete practices, such as when instructions arrive or which exercises help students prepare. Give students a way to contribute without having to criticize a teacher publicly.
Corporate teams
Teams can use the prompts in working-practice reviews or planning sessions. Separate feedback about the process from sensitive individual performance concerns. For a one-to-one discussion, see the Start Stop Continue feedback examples for managers.
Individuals
For personal development, the three columns help organize thoughts about habits, skills, and goals. Choose practices you can influence. A private reflection about interruptions is different from a workload problem that needs a decision by the wider team.
Community groups
Community groups and nonprofit organizations can review an event, program, or volunteer handoff. Include people who delivered the work and people who experienced it. Use the same three-column structure with language that participants recognize; separate branded templates are not required for every audience.
When and why should you use Start Stop Continue?
Use the technique while people can still recall the work: after delivering a project, reaching a milestone, completing a sprint, or running an event. It can also help when a team feels stuck with habits nobody has examined recently. Name the period or task at the top of the board.
The format is useful when people can describe changes they want to consider. If the group first needs to understand why an experience was difficult, a Mad Sad Glad retrospective can open that conversation. An incident with an unclear cause may need an evidence-based timeline before anyone proposes a solution.
The three prompts support several different purposes:
- Continuous improvement: identify a manageable change to try during the next period.
- Constructive feedback: discuss observable practices and their effects instead of judgments about motives.
- Alignment with goals: ask whether an activity helps deliver the outcome the team agreed to pursue.
- Reflection: make room to notice what worked as well as what went wrong.
- Planning: decide what to stop before adding a new recurring activity.
- Decision-making: compare suggestions, dependencies, and costs rather than turning every note into a task.
Make vague feedback concrete
“Start communicating” becomes “Record the decision and its owner after planning.” “Stop wasting time” becomes “Remove the duplicate status meeting after agreeing where its decisions belong.” “Continue teamwork” becomes “Keep the cross-role walkthrough for work that affects support.” These statements describe practices people can discuss.
Run the discussion in five stages
- Collect ideas. Give everyone a few quiet minutes to write one practice per note, with a brief reason.
- Clarify. Ask what each suggestion would change. “Start a daily meeting” may really mean “make the next handoff clear.”
- Group related ideas. Keep both a Start note and a related Stop note when they describe different sides of the same issue.
- Choose a few feasible changes. Discuss value, effort, authority, and possible side effects. Popularity alone does not make a suggestion workable.
- Record the decision. State what will happen, who will arrange it, and when the team will discuss the result.
Four Start Stop Continue examples to adapt
The same layout works in different settings. The important change is the content of the notes, not the decoration around the columns.
1. Project management: review risks before a milestone
A project team can review its strategies, resources, communication, and handoffs at the end of a milestone.
For example, turn “adopt adaptive approaches” into Start: review the next milestone's assumptions before committing work. Turn “do not neglect risks” into Stop: treating an unanswered dependency request as confirmation. Keep Continue: recording decisions in one shared project note.
Check whether the people needed for the new review can actually participate.
2. Agile sprint: make review work visible
At the end of a sprint, focus on the practices that affected the team's work. Start: discuss items waiting for review before pulling new work. Stop: marking an item complete before its acceptance conditions are met. Continue: pairing on unfamiliar parts of the codebase.
The team might try a review-first discussion in the next sprint and examine whether review queues become easier to manage. Preserve stakeholder feedback and useful collaboration without treating individual busyness as the outcome.
3. Education: help students prepare for a workshop
Use an end-of-term or post-activity review to discuss teaching methods, materials, and learning activities. Start: share the workshop question and required reading beforehand. Stop: introducing essential background only during the final discussion. Continue: allowing quiet individual thinking before group sharing.
Ask students which information they still lacked and whether the preparation helped them take part. This is more useful than a general commitment to make every session “more engaging.”
4. Personal development: protect concentrated work
For a monthly reflection, consider your habits, skills, and goals. Start: reserve a work block for the week's most demanding draft. Stop: checking every notification while drafting. Continue: asking a colleague to review the outline before writing the full document.
Keep the chosen change within your control. If concentrated work is impossible because of conflicting responsibilities, bring that constraint to the relevant planning conversation rather than treating it as a failure of personal discipline.
Prepare your next retrospective in Boardmix
Create Start, Stop, and Continue columns, then add a smaller area for “What we will try.” Replace sample notes with observations from the period you selected. Move related suggestions together and write final decisions separately so exploratory ideas remain distinguishable from commitments.
Keep the working area readable. Start a fresh area for the next discussion instead of mixing months of old notes with current feedback. Open Boardmix to prepare your team's three-column retrospective.
