Agile Retrospective Board
A multi-format Excel retrospective tool supporting Start/Stop/Continue, 4Ls, Mad/Sad/Glad, and Sailboat retrospective formats. Includes action item tracking and sprint-over-sprint trend analysis.
What’s inside
- 4 retrospective formats in one workbook
- Action item tracker with owner and due date
- Blank Template + Filled Example
About this download
The Agile Retrospective Board is a multi-format Excel workbook that supports the most widely used retrospective formats in one place: Start/Stop/Continue, 4Ls (Liked, Learned, Lacked, Longed For), Mad/Sad/Glad, and the Sailboat (wind, anchor, rocks, island). Regular retrospectives are the engine of continuous improvement in any agile team, and rotating formats keeps the ritual fresh so the conversation doesn't calcify into the same complaints every fortnight.
The workbook includes one tab per retrospective format with guidance on when to use each (early-stage teams benefit from Start/Stop/Continue, teams with low psychological safety often open up faster with Mad/Sad/Glad, teams stuck in a rut are re-energised by the Sailboat metaphor), a timed facilitation guide for a standard 60-minute session, an action-item tracker that carries forward across sprints so owners are accountable beyond the room, a sprint-over-sprint trend view showing how many action items are completed each cycle, and a library of 20+ alternative retrospective formats for mature teams that want more variety.
This template is used by scrum masters, agile coaches, team leads, product managers and engineering managers running fortnightly or sprint-end retrospectives. It also suits non-software teams — marketing squads running campaigns, customer success teams running quarterly reviews, sales teams running win/loss reviews — wherever a regular, disciplined reflection practice would improve outcomes.
A high-value retrospective requires psychological safety more than anything else — the facilitator's job is to make it safe for the quietest team member to raise the most uncomfortable issue. Keep retros time-boxed (60 minutes, rarely longer), focus on systems and processes rather than individuals, and limit action items to no more than three per session. A retrospective that produces six action items, none of which are completed by the next cycle, is worse than one that produces two action items both delivered.
The filled example inside the download shows a year's worth of retrospectives for a fictional product squad, including the kind of honest entries (process problems, leadership friction, tooling pain) that retrospectives exist to surface, and a visible trend of action-item completion rate improving over time.
Inside Vizually, retrospective actions become cards on the team's visual board with owners and due dates, so commitments made in the retro don't disappear into the noise — they show up in the daily flow of work where they get done.