Retrospective Questions: 40 Questions for Project and Sprint Retros

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Retrospective questions are the prompts a team uses after a project, sprint or piece of work to look back at what worked, what didn't and what to change next time. Good ones are short, open and about the work rather than the people, and a good retro always ends with a few owned actions, not just a list of complaints.

This guide is built on the Retrospective card in The Leader's Toolkit. Get the full deck

Why most retros go nowhere

• The loudest voice wins. If people answer out loud straight away, the first opinion anchors everyone else. Silent writing first fixes this.
• It becomes a blame session. Once a retro feels like a trial, people stop being honest and the next one is a polite waste of an hour.
• Nothing changes. A whiteboard full of sticky notes with no owners is the most common outcome, and the fastest way to kill the habit.

How to run a retrospective in 8 steps

These are the steps on the Retrospective card, with the detail that makes each one work.

1. Get the right people in the room. Everyone who did the work, plus key stakeholders, shortly after the project or phase ends. Leave it a month and the details are gone.
2. Set up a board. A whiteboard or a shared virtual board with a column for each question. Keep the format visible so the discussion stays on track.
3. Pick your questions. What went well / didn't go well / could be improved, or Mad, Sad, Glad, or Keep, Stop, Start. More formats below.
4. Write first, talk second. Give everyone five minutes to write their thoughts individually before revealing them. Quieter people get heard, and you get the real picture rather than the first one.
5. Vote on the top three. Group similar notes, then give everyone three votes. You can't fix twelve things, but you can fix three.
6. Build an action plan. For each priority, agree who, what, when and how. "Improve communication" is not an action; "Sam sets up a 15-minute Monday stand-up from next week" is.
7. Give every action one owner. Shared ownership means no ownership. One name per action, and check progress at the start of the next retro.
8. Write down what you learned and share it. Store the lessons somewhere others can find them, such as a team wiki, so the next project starts from your best practice rather than from scratch.

40 retrospective questions to ask your team

Don't use all of them. Pick four to six that fit the moment, and swap them around between retros.

The core questions

1. What went well?
2. What didn't go well?
3. What could we improve next time?
4. What should we keep doing?
5. What should we stop doing?
6. What should we start doing?
7. What surprised you?
8. What's one thing we learned that we should never forget?

Project retrospective questions

9. Did we achieve what we set out to do? If not, why not?
10. Where did our estimates turn out furthest from reality?
11. Which decision would we make differently with what we know now?
12. Where did we lose the most time?
13. Were the goals and success measures clear from the start?
14. Did we have the right people involved at the right time?
15. How well did we manage changes to scope?
16. Which risks did we spot early, and which ones caught us out?

Sprint and agile retrospective questions

17. Did we hit our sprint goal? What helped or got in the way?
18. What slowed us down this sprint?
19. Which piece of work took longer than expected, and why?
20. Were our tickets clear enough to start work without chasing?
21. Did anything get blocked waiting on someone else?
22. Did we finish the actions from our last retro?
23. Is there a meeting or process we could drop?
24. What one thing would make next sprint easier?

Team and ways of working

25. When did you feel most supported by the team?
26. Was there a moment you held back from saying something? What would have made it easier?
27. Who helped you this time, and how?
28. Did we communicate well with other teams?
29. Was the workload fair across the team?
30. How did we handle disagreements?
31. Did everyone know who was making which decisions?
32. What do you need from me as your manager that you didn't get?

Fun retrospective questions and openers

33. If this project were a film, what would it be called?
34. Describe the sprint in one word.
35. Give it a weather forecast: sunny, cloudy or stormy?
36. What would you tell yourself on day one if you could go back?
37. What was the best moment of the project?
38. What's one thing you're proud of that nobody noticed?
39. On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate this sprint, and what would make it a 5?
40. Who deserves a thank you that hasn't had one yet?

5 retrospective formats

Each format is just a different set of columns on the board. Rotate them to keep answers fresh.

A 60-minute retrospective agenda

This follows the five stages described by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen in Agile Retrospectives.

Make it safe to be honest

A retro only works if people tell you what actually happened. That depends on psychological safety: the belief that you won't be punished for raising a problem or admitting a mistake. Norm Kerth, who wrote Project Retrospectives, proposed opening every retro with a "Prime Directive": an agreement that everyone did the best job they could with what they knew at the time. As the manager, go first and name something you'd do differently. If you can admit a mistake, others will.

Common mistakes

• Turning it into a trial. Asking "whose fault was this?" ends honesty. Ask "what made this hard?" instead.
• The manager talks first. Your view anchors everyone else. Write silently, then speak last.
• Too many actions. Ten actions means none get done. Three, with owners, is plenty.
• Never reviewing old actions. Start each retro by checking the last one's actions, or people learn that retros don't matter.
• Only running them when things go wrong. Retro successful projects too. Knowing why something worked is how you repeat it.

Tools that work well with this one

• Psychological safety at workRetros only work when people feel safe to be honest.
• How to give constructive feedbackTurn retro observations into feedback people can act on.
• Active listening exercisesHear what's behind the sticky notes.
• Team health check templateCheck how the team itself is doing, not just the project.

FAQs

What are the three retrospective questions?

The classic three are: What went well? What didn't go well? What could we improve? Keep, Stop, Start is a popular alternative that points more directly at actions.

What is the difference between a sprint retrospective and a project retrospective?

A sprint retrospective is a short, regular meeting at the end of each sprint in Scrum, usually focused on how the team works. A project retrospective happens once at the end of a project or phase and looks at the whole thing: goals, decisions, estimates and stakeholders as well as teamwork.

How long should a retrospective take?

For a two-week sprint, 45 to 60 minutes is usually enough. For the end of a longer project, allow 90 minutes to two hours. If you regularly run out of time, you're trying to fix too many things at once.

What if nobody says anything in the retro?

Use silent writing and anonymous notes, start with a fun opener, and go first yourself by naming something you'd change. If it persists, it's a trust problem rather than a retro problem, so work on psychological safety first.