Starfish Retrospective

What is the Starfish retrospective?

The Starfish retrospective expands Start, Stop, Continue with two extra columns: "more of" and "less of." The idea, attributed to Patrick Kua, is that real team behaviour rarely splits cleanly between "do this" and "don't do this." Most things sit on a gradient. The team isn't going to stop standups, but they could probably do them less often. They're not going to start a new ritual from scratch, but they could do more of the pre-mortem they tried once and dropped.

The format gets its name from the five-pointed shape it takes when drawn on a whiteboard. Each "arm" is a column. Teams that have been running Start, Stop, Continue for a while often find that their cards keep landing somewhere in between the columns. Starfish gives those cards a home.

When to use it

Use it when the team has been doing Start, Stop, Continue for a while and is finding that real life is more "do less of" than "stop entirely." If retros keep producing cards that don't quite fit the binary frame ("we should do code review, but maybe not every PR"), Starfish gives that conversation room. It also works well for mature teams that already have established rituals and want to tune them rather than overhaul them.

When not to use it

Skip it for new teams. Five columns is too much choice when people are still figuring out what's worth surfacing. Start, Stop, Continue gives clearer guard rails. Skip it also for short retros. The format needs at least 45 minutes to work, and if you're trying to fit a retro into 30, the extra columns will get under-served and the result will be worse than a three-column format that got proper attention.

Column prompts

• Keep doing — Ask what's working that the team should protect from being eroded. Specific practices, not vague good vibes. This is the equivalent of Continue in a three-column format.
• Less of — Ask what's costing the team time but isn't worth stopping entirely. Long Slack threads, mid-sprint scope changes, status meetings. The point is dialing things down, not removing them.
• More of — Ask what the team has tried and liked but isn't doing enough of. Documentation reviews, pre-mortems, demos. These are usually practices that worked once and didn't stick.
• Stop doing — Ask what should be cut entirely. Stronger than Less of: these are things with no value that the team should stop tomorrow.
• Start doing — Ask what new practice the team should add. New rituals, missing roles, gaps in the workflow. Push for one concrete proposal per card.

Facilitator tips

• Plan 45 to 60 minutes. The five columns each need their own discussion time, and rushing turns Starfish into a thinner version of Start, Stop, Continue.
• Be strict about which column a card goes in. The whole point of the format is the gradient between Less of, Stop, More of, and Start. If cards drift, you've lost the value.
• Run silent writing for 7 to 10 minutes. The team needs more time than usual to place each thought in the right column.
• Vote on Stop and Start most heavily. Less of and More of are tuning knobs and don't need the same level of prioritisation.
• Cap actions at three to four. The five columns will tempt the team to commit to one item per arm. That's eight changes, and none of them will land.
• If the same card shows up in both Less of and Stop across team members, that's a useful disagreement. Have the conversation about why some people see it as "less" and others see it as "gone."

Common mistakes

• Cards drift between Less of and Stop without resolution. Pick one and force the conversation.
• Treating More of as a wishlist. It should be practices the team has actually tried, not aspirations.
• Walking out with five actions across five columns. Pick the few that matter and own them properly.
• Running it for 30 minutes. The format needs space to work and the extra columns get squeezed.
• Using it as the team's first retro format. Start with three columns and graduate to Starfish once the team is comfortable.

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