Went Well / To Improve / Action Items

What it is

This is the most basic (and, at times, the most effective) format for a "retro." Three columns: what went well, what didn't, and what the team commits to changing. No theme, no constraint — it's a general container, which is exactly why it's the default in most tools retro tools, including this one.

Generally, "To Improve" items get converted into "Action Items" before the meeting ends. If you skip that step, you've just run a complaint session with a nicer name. The format doesn't enforce that steo for you — nothing stops a card from sitting in "To Improve" forever — this means that its usefulness depends entirely on facilitator discipline rather than the structure itself. That's the trade-off for its flexibility: it asks nothing of you up front, but it also protects you from nothing.

It also scales oddly with team size. A five-person team can discuss every card that gets written. A twelve-person team writing at the same per-person rate produces more cards than a one-hour meeting can responsibly cover, and then what happens? You end up discussing the loudest cards rather than the most important ones.

When to use it

Use it for a team's first few retros, before anyone has a reason to want something more pointed. It's also the right choice after a mixed sprint — one with some wins, some misses, but nothing dramatic enough to justify a themed format. If you're not sure which format to pick, this is the one to pick; it's rarely the wrong call, but at times can be the less interesting one. It's also the right format when the facilitator is new to the role. Other formats ask the facilitator to actively manage a specific dynamic (behavior framing for Start-Stop-Continue, emotional tone for Mad-Sad-Glad, etc). This one's main job, converting "To Improve" into "Action Items", is a single, teachable habit rather than an ongoing judgment call. That makes it a reasonable format to learn facilitation on before taking on the others.

Common failure mode

The column that can be a pitfall to the meeting is "To Improve." It's the easiest one to fill, because complaining is easy, and it produces cards fast. Left unchecked, a team fills fifteen "To Improve" cards, three "Went Well" cards, and then runs out of time before the discussion phase, so nothing becomes an "Action Item" at all (remember, this is the format's entire reason for existing).

The fix is procedural and simple: time-box "To Improve" discussion explicitly, and treat a retro where fewer than half the surfaced issues get converted into named, owned action items as a retro that needs redesigning, not a team that needs to try harder.

A second, quieter failure: the same three or four "To Improve" cards reappear sprint after sprint with a new Action Item attached each time, and nobody notices the pattern because each retro is evaluated in isolation. Keep a running list of the last few sprints' action items visible at the start of the next retro (better yet, throughout the entire sprint). A recurring "To Improve" card is a signal that the actual fix is bigger than what a single retro can commit to, not that the team needs to write yet another ticket.

Example cards